diff --git "a/wikipedia_44.txt" "b/wikipedia_44.txt" new file mode 100644--- /dev/null +++ "b/wikipedia_44.txt" @@ -0,0 +1,10000 @@ +37.20% indicated that they had a British national identity, 36.08% had an Irish national identity and 29.53% had a Northern Irish national identity + +2021 Census +On Census Day (2021), the usually resident population of Fermanagh Local Government District, the borders of the district were very similar to those of the traditional County Fermanagh, was 63,585. Of these: + +58.8% belong to or were brought up in the Catholic religion and 35.5% belong to or were brought up in a 'Protestant and Other Christian (including Christian related)' religion. + + Community background and religion + + Ethnicity + + Country of birth + + Main languages + + Knowledge of Irish + + Knowledge of Ulster Scots + + National identity + +Industry and tourism +Agriculture and tourism are two of the most important industries in Fermanagh. The main types of farming in the area are beef, dairy, sheep, pigs and some poultry. Most of the agricultural land is used as grassland for grazing and silage or hay rather than for other crops. + +The waterways are extensively used by cabin cruisers, other small pleasure craft and anglers. The main town of Fermanagh is Enniskillen (, 'Ceithleann's island'). The island town hosts a range of attractions including the Castle Coole Estate and Enniskillen Castle, which is home to the museum of The Royal Inniskilling Fusiliers and the 5th Royal Inniskilling Dragoon Guards. Fermanagh is also home to The Boatyard Distillery, a distillery producing gin. + +Attractions outside Enniskillen include: + Belleek Pottery + Castle Archdale + Crom Estate + Cuilcagh Boardwalk Trail + Devenish Island + Florence Court + Marble Arch Caves + Tempo Manor + +Settlements + + Large towns +(population of 18,000 or more and under 75,000 at 2011 Census) + none + +Medium towns +(population of 10,000 or more and under 18,000 at 2011 Census) + Enniskillen + +Small towns +(population of 5,000 or more and under 10,000 at 2011 Census) + none + +Intermediate settlements +(population of 2,500 or more and under 4,500 at 2011 Census) + Lisnaskea + +Villages +(population of 1,000 or more and under 2,500 at 2011 Census) + Ballinamallard + Irvinestown + Kesh + Lisbellaw + Maguiresbridge + +Small villages or hamlets +(population of less than 1,000 at 2011 Census) + Aghadrumsee + Arney + Ballycassidy + Belcoo + Bellanaleck + Belleek + Boho + Brookeborough + Clabby + Coa + Derrygonnelly + Derrylin + Donagh + Ederney + Florencecourt + Garrison + Killadeas + Kinawley + Lack + Letterbreen + Lisnarick + Magheraveely + Monea + Newtownbutler + Pettigo (partially) + Rosslea + Springfield + Tamlaght + Teemore + Tempo + Wattlebridge + +SubdivisionsBaroniesClanawley +Clankelly +Coole +Knockninny +Lurg +Magheraboy +Magherastephana +TirkennedyParishesTownlandsMediaNewspapers The Fermanagh Herald + The Impartial Reporter + +Sport + +Fermanagh GAA has never won a Senior Provincial or an All-Ireland title in any Gaelic games. + +Only Ballinamallard United F.C. take part in the Northern Ireland football league system. All other Fermanagh clubs play in the Fermanagh & Western FA league systems. Fermanagh Mallards F.C. played in the Women's Premier League until 2013. + +Enniskillen RFC was founded in 1925 and is still going. There is also a rugby league team, the Fermanagh Redskins + +Famous football players from Fermanagh include – + + Sandy Fulton + Jim Cleary +Roy Carroll + Harry Chatton + Barry Owens + Kyle Lafferty + +Notable people + +Famous people born, raised in or living in Fermanagh include: + + John Armstrong (1717–1795), born in Fermanagh, Major General in the Continental Army and delegate in the Continental Congress + Samuel Beckett (1906–1989), author and playwright from Foxrock in Dublin, educated at Portora Royal School + Darren Breslin, traditional musician + The 1st Viscount Brookeborough, Prime Minister of Northern Ireland, 1943–1963 + Denis Parsons Burkitt (1911–1993), doctor, discoverer of Burkitt's lymphoma + Roy Carroll (born 1977), association footballer + Edward Cooney (1867–1960), evangelist and early leader of the Cooneyite and Go-Preachers + Brian D'Arcy (born 1945), C.P., Passionist priest and media personality + Brendan Dolan (born 1973), professional darts player for the PDC + Adrian Dunbar (born 1958), actor + Arlene Foster, Baroness Foster of Aghadrumsee (born 1970), politician + Neil Hannon (born 1970), musician + Robert Kerr (1882–1963), athlete and Olympic gold medalist + Kyle Lafferty (born 1987), Northern Ireland International association footballer + Charles Lawson (born 1959), actor (plays Jim McDonald in Coronation Street) + Francis Little (1822–1890), born in Fermanagh, Wisconsin State Senator + Terence MacManus (c. 1823–1861), leader in Young Irelander Rebellion of 1848 + Michael Magner (1840–97), recipient of the Victoria Cross + Peter McGinnity, Gaelic footballer, Fermanagh's first winner of an All-Star Award + Martin McGrath, Gaelic footballer, All-Star winner + Ciarán McMenamin (born 1975), actor + Gilla Mochua Ó Caiside (12th century), poet + Aurora Mulligan, director + Barry Owens, Gaelic footballer, two-time All-Star winner + Sean Quinn (born 1947), entrepreneur + Michael Sleavon (1826–1902), recipient of the Victoria Cross + Patrick Treacy, author and one-time physician to Michael Jackson + Joan Trimble (1915–2000), pianist and composer + Oscar Wilde (1854–1900), author and playwright, educated at Portora Royal School + Gordon Wilson (1927–1995), peace campaigner and Irish senator + +Surnames +The most common surnames in County Fermanagh at the time of the United Kingdom Census of 1901 were: + Maguire + McManus + Johnston + Armstrong + Gallagher + Elliott + Murphy + Reilly + Cassidy + Wilson + +Railways +The railway lines in County Fermanagh connected Enniskillen railway station with Derry from 1854, Dundalk from 1861, Bundoran from 1868 and Sligo from 1882. + +The railway companies that served the county, prior to the establishment by the merger of Londonderry and Enniskillen Railway, Enniskillen and Bundoran Railway the Dundalk and Enniskillen Railway which was later named the Irish North Western Railway, thus forming the Great Northern Railway (Ireland). By 1883 the Great Northern Railway (Ireland) absorbed all the lines except the Sligo, Leitrim and Northern Counties Railway, which remained independent throughout its existence. + +In October 1957 the Government of Northern Ireland closed the GNR line, which made it impossible for the SL&NCR continue and forced it also to close. + +The nearest railway station to Enniskillen is Sligo station which is served by trains to Dublin Connolly and is operated by Iarnród Éireann. The Dublin-Sligo railway line has a two-hourly service run by Iarnród Éireann. The connecting bus from Sligo via Manorhamilton to Enniskillen is route 66' operated by Bus Éireann. + +See also + + Abbeys and priories in Northern Ireland (County Fermanagh) + Castles in County Fermanagh + Extreme points of the United Kingdom + High Sheriff of Fermanagh + List of parishes of County Fermanagh + List of places in County Fermanagh + List of townlands in County Fermanagh + Lord Lieutenant of Fermanagh + People from County Fermanagh + +Notes + +References + Clogher Record + "Fermanagh" A Dictionary of British Place-Names. A. D. Mills. Oxford University Press, 2003. Oxford Reference Online. Oxford University Press. Northern Ireland Public Libraries. 25 July 2007 + "Fermanagh" Encyclopædia Britannica. 2007. Encyclopædia Britannica Online Library Edition. 25 July 2007 . + Fermanagh: its special landscapes: a study of the Fermanagh countryside and its heritage /Department of the Environment for Northern Ireland. – Belfast: HMSO, 1991 + Livingstone, Peadar. – The Fermanagh story:a documented history of the County Fermanagh from the earliest times to the present day – Enniskillen: Cumann Seanchais Chlochair, 1969. + Lowe, Henry N. – County Fermanagh 100 years ago: a guide and directory 1880. – Belfast: Friar's Bush Press, 1990. + Parke, William K. – A Fermanagh Childhood. Derrygonnelly, Co Fermanagh: Friar's Bush Press, 1988. + Impartial Reporter + Fermanagh Herald + +External links + +Fermanagh on the interactive map of the counties of Great Britain and Ireland – Wikishire + A folk history of Fermanagh +Christian most often refers to: + + Christians, people who follow or adhere to Christianity + pertaining to Christianity + +Christian or The Christian may also refer to: + +Arts and entertainment + +Film + Christian (1939 film), a Czech comedy film + Christian (1989 film), a Danish drama film + The Christian (1911 film), an Australian silent film + The Christian (1914 film), an American silent film directed by Frederick A. Thomson + The Christian (1915 film), a British silent film directed by George Loane Tucker + The Christian (1923 film), an American silent film drama directed by Maurice Tourneur + +Music + "Christian" (song), a 1982 song by China Crisis + Christian the Christian, a 2004 album by Lackthereof + The Christians (band), a UK band from Liverpool, formed 1985 + +Other uses in arts and entertainment + The Christian, an 1897 novel and play by Hall Caine, adapted for Broadway + The Christian (magazine), the title of several magazines + Christian, the protagonist in John Bunyan's novel The Pilgrim's Progress + +People + Christian (given name), including a list of people and fictional characters with the given name + Christian (surname), including a list of people with the surname + Christian of Clogher (d. 1138), saint and Irish bishop + Christian of Oliva, a 13th-century Cistercian monk + Christian (bishop of Aarhus), fl. c. 1060 to c. 1102 + Christian (footballer, born 1995) (Christian Savio Machado) + Christian (footballer, born 2000) (Christian Roberto Alves Cardoso) + Christian (singer) (Gaetano Cristiano Rossi, born 1949) + Christian, ring name of professional wrestler Christian Cage (William Jason Reso, born November 30, 1973) + Prince Christian (disambiguation) + Christian I (disambiguation) + Christian II (disambiguation) + Christian III (disambiguation) + +Other uses + Christian the lion (born 1969) + Christian, West Virginia, a place in the U.S. + +See also + + The Christians (disambiguation) + St. Jude storm of 2013, also called Cyclone Christian + Christian Doctrine in United States federal law, arising from G. L. Christian and Associates v. United States +The Republic of Colombia is situated largely in the north-west of South America, with some territories falling within the boundaries of Central America. It is bordered to the north-west by Panama; to the east by Brazil and Venezuela; to the south by Ecuador and Peru; and it shares maritime limits with Costa Rica, Nicaragua, Honduras, Jamaica, the Dominican Republic, and Haiti. + +Colombia has a land size of and it is the 25th largest nation in the world and the fourth-largest country in South America (after Brazil, Argentina, and Peru). Colombia's population is not evenly distributed, and most of the people live in the mountainous western portion of the country as well as along the northern coastline; the highest number live in or near the capital city of Bogotá. The southern and eastern portions of the country are sparsely inhabited, consisting of tropical rainforest, and inland tropical plains that contain large estates or large livestock farms, oil and gas production facilities, small farming communities, and indigenous tribes with their territories. Colombia has the 35th largest Exclusive Economic Zone of . + +Main + +Colombia usually classifies its geography into five natural regions, from the Andes mountain range, a region shared with Ecuador, Venezuela; the Pacific Ocean coastal region, shared with Panama and Ecuador; the Caribbean Sea coastal region, shared with Venezuela and Panama; the Llanos (plains), shared with Venezuela; to the Amazon Rainforest region shared with Venezuela, Brazil, Peru and Ecuador. Colombia is the only South American country that has coastline on both the Atlantic and Pacific oceans. + +The World Factbook does not differentiate between the Amazon region of Colombia (predominantly jungle) and the Orinoquia region of Colombia (predominantly plains). It suggests dividing the country into four geographic regions: the Andean highlands, consisting of the three Andean ranges and intervening valley lowlands; the Caribbean lowlands coastal region; the Pacific lowlands coastal region, separated from the Caribbean lowlands by swamps at the base of the Isthmus of Panama; and eastern Colombia, the great plain that lies to the east of the Andes Mountains. + +The chief western mountain range, the Cordillera Occidental, is a moderately high range with peaks reaching up to about (4,670 m). The Cauca River Valley, an important agricultural region with several large cities on its borders, separates the Cordillera Occidental from the massive Cordillera Central. Several snow-clad volcanoes in the Cordillera Central have summits that rise above . The valley of the slow-flowing and muddy Magdalena River, a major transportation artery, separates the Cordillera Central from the main eastern range, the Cordillera Oriental. The peaks of the Cordillera Oriental are moderately high. This range differs from Colombia's other mountain ranges in that it contains several large basins. In the east, the sparsely populated, flat to gently rolling eastern lowlands called llanos cover almost 60 percent of the country's total land area. + +This cross section of the republic does not include two of Colombia's regions: the Caribbean coastal lowlands and the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta, both in the northern part of the country. The lowlands in the west are mostly swampy; the reed-filled marshes of the area are called ciénagas by the people of Colombia. The Guajira Peninsula in the east is semiarid and is occupied primarily by indigenous peoples. The Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta is a spectacular triangular snowcapped block of rock that towers over the eastern part of this lowland. Here can be found the highest peak of the country, named Pico Cristobal Colon (5775 m). + +Andean region + +Near the Ecuadorian frontier, the Andes Mountains divide into three distinct, roughly parallel chains, called cordilleras, that extend northeastward almost to the Caribbean Sea. Altitudes reach more than , and mountain peaks are permanently covered with snow. The elevated basins and plateaus of these ranges have a moderate climate that provides pleasant living conditions and in many places enables farmers to harvest twice a year. Torrential rivers on the slopes of the mountains produce a large hydroelectric power potential and add their volume to the navigable rivers in the valleys. In the late 1980s, approximately 78 percent of the country's population lived in the Andean highlands. + +The Cordillera Occidental in the west, the Cordillera Central in the center, and the Cordillera Oriental in the east have different characteristics. Geologically, the Cordillera Occidental and the Cordillera Central form the western and eastern sides of a massive crystalline arch that extends from the Caribbean lowlands to the southern border of Ecuador. The Cordillera Oriental, however, is composed of folded stratified rocks overlying a crystalline core. + +The Cordillera Occidental is relatively low and is the least populated of the three cordilleras. Summits are only about above sea level and do not have permanent snows. Few passes exist, although one that is about above sea level provides the major city of Cali with an outlet to the Pacific Ocean. The relatively low elevation of the cordillera permits dense vegetation, which on the western slopes is truly tropical. + +The Cordillera Occidental is separated from the Cordillera Central by the deep rift of the Cauca Valley. The Río Cauca rises within of the border with Ecuador and flows through some of the best farmland in the country. After the two cordilleras converge, the Cauca Valley becomes a deep gorge reaching to the Caribbean lowlands. + +The Cordillera Central is the loftiest of the mountain systems. Its crystalline rocks form a towering wall dotted with snow-covered volcanoes that is long. There are no plateaus in this range and no passes under . The highest peak in this range, the Nevado del Huila, reaches above sea level. The second highest peak is a volcano, Nevado del Ruiz, which erupted violently on November 13, 1985. Toward its northern end, this cordillera separates into several branches that descend toward the Caribbean coast. + +Between the Cordillera Central and the Cordillera Oriental flows the Magdalena River. This river rises near a point some north of the border with Ecuador, where the Cordillera Oriental and the Cordillera Central diverge. Its spacious drainage area is fed by numerous mountain torrents originating high in the snowfields. The Magdalena River is generally navigable from the Caribbean Sea as far as the town of Neiva, deep in the interior, but it is interrupted midway by rapids. The valley floor is very deep; nearly from the river's mouth the elevation is no more than about . + +In the Cordillera Oriental, at elevations between , three large fertile basins and a number of small ones provide suitable areas for settlement and intensive economic production. In the basin of Cundinamarca, where the Spanish encountered the regional Chibcha Indians, the European invaders established the town of Santa Fe de Bogotá (present-day Bogotá) at an elevation of above sea level. + +To the north of Bogotá, in the densely populated basins of Chiquinquirá and Boyacá, are fertile fields, rich mines, and large industrial establishments that produce much of the national wealth. Still farther north, where the Cordillera Oriental makes an abrupt turn to the northwest near the border with Venezuela, the Sierra Nevada de Cocuy, the highest point of this range, rises to above sea level. In the department of Santander, the valleys on the western slopes are more spacious, and agriculture is intensive in the area around Bucaramanga. The northernmost region of the range around Cúcuta is so rugged that historically it has been easier for residents here to maintain communications and transportation with Venezuela than with the adjacent parts of Colombia. + +The basic plantation of Colombia is grassy and is near the equator which allows many tropical-like plants. + +Caribbean region + +The Caribbean lowlands consist of all of Colombia north of an imaginary line extending northeastward from the Golfo de Urabá to the Venezuelan frontier at the northern extremity of the Cordillera Oriental. The semiarid Guajira Peninsula and Guajira–Barranquilla xeric scrub, in the extreme north, bear little resemblance to the rest of the region. In the southern part rises the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta, an isolated mountain system with peaks reaching heights over and slopes generally too steep for cultivation. + +The Caribbean lowlands region is in roughly the shape of a triangle, the longest side of which is the coastline. Most of the country's commerce moves through the cities of Cartagena, Barranquilla, Santa Marta, and the other ports located along this important coast. Inland from these cities are swamps, hidden streams, and shallow lakes that support banana and cotton plantations for major commodity crops, countless small farms, and, in higher places, cattle ranches. + +The city of Cartagena is a petrochemical, seaport (#1 in the country), and tourist city (#1 in the country). Santa Marta is also a seaport and tourist city but it is smaller scale city in comparison. Barranquilla is located some from the Caribbean coastline but it is a more developed city, with a greater number of industries and commercial places, widely known for its skilled workers in producing all forms of metalwork and accomplishing construction. Its inhabitants have the highest education level of the region. The city is famous as the starting point and focus of the region and the country's development: it was the first city in the nation to install and use telephones, public lighting, air mail, planes, and industrial works. + +The Caribbean region merges next to and is connected with the Andean highlands through the two great river valleys. After the Andean highlands, it is the second-most important region in terms of economic activity. Approximately 17% of the country's population lived in this region in the late 1980s. + +The region also includes the peninsular archipelago of San Andres Island and the Insular Territories of Colombia, which are disputed in part by Nicaragua. However, the Colombian Navy protects such territories with the use of force when necessary to avoid foreign invasion. The islands are fortified with two important bases for defense and custom controls. These were formerly used for research of classified projects with civilian assistance; the local universities often conduct research in the areas of oceanography and marine biology but also in the fields of biochemistry, genetics and immunology. Colombia is known for its advances in medical fields in experimental surgery, breast implant development, or prosthetics, and immunology. These facilities serve as containment and secure experimentation labs to complement those in Barranquilla and other undisclosed locations within the coast territories. + +The Insular Region is considered by some as a geopolitical region of Colombia. It comprises the areas outside the continental territories of Colombia and includes the San Andrés y Providencia Department in the Caribbean sea and the Malpelo and Gorgona islands in the Pacific Ocean. Its subregions include other groups of islands: + + Archipiélago de San Bernardo (in the Morrosquillo Gulf, Caribbean). + Islas del Rosario (Caribbean) + Isla Fuerte (Caribbean) + Isla Barú (Caribbean) + Isla Tortuguilla (Caribbean) + Isla Tierra Bomba (Caribbean) + +Pacific region + +The western third of the country is the most geographically complex. Starting at the shore of the Pacific Ocean in the west and moving eastward at a latitude of 5 degrees north, a diverse sequence of features is encountered. In the extreme west are the very narrow and discontinuous Pacific coastal lowlands, which are backed by the Serranía de Baudó, the lowest and narrowest of Colombia's mountain ranges. Next is the broad region of the Río Atrato/Río San Juan lowland. + +In 1855, William Kennish, an engineer and veteran of the British Royal Navy, who had immigrated to the United States and was working for a New York City firm, studied the area and proposed an inter-oceanic river aqueduct and tunnel to connect the Rio Atrato, with its mouth at the Atlantic Ocean, with tributaries and through a tunnel and aqueduct through Nerqua Pass, to flow into Bahía Humboldt at the Pacific Ocean. + +This was his alternative to the canal that was eventually built further west on the isthmus of what became Panama after it gained independence in the early 20th century. Although the US sent an expedition to explore Kennish's proposal, the concept was not developed at the time. Colombia refused a later US offer to build a canal. After independence, in 1903 Panama made a treaty with the US to support construction of the Panama Canal. Colombia occupies most of the Andes mountain range northern extremity, sharing a bit with Venezuela; the range splits into three branches between the Colombia-Ecuador border. + +In the 1980s, only three percent of all Colombians resided in the Pacific lowlands, a region of jungle and swamp with considerable but little-exploited potential in minerals and other resources. Later in the 20th century, it was threatened by mining-related deforestation, as gold mining proceeded by both major companies and artisan miners. Buenaventura is the only port of any size on the coast. To the east, the Pacific lowlands are bounded by the Cordillera Occidental, from which numerous streams run. Most of the streams flow westward to the Pacific, but the largest, the navigable Río Atrato, flows northward to the Golfo de Urabá. Its river settlements have access to the major Atlantic ports and consequently are commercially related primarily to the Caribbean lowlands hinterland. To the west of the Río Atrato rises the Serranía de Baudó, an isolated chain of low mountains that occupies a large part of the region. Its highest elevation is less than 1,800 meters, and its vegetation resembles that of the surrounding tropical forest. + +The Atrato Swamp, in Chocó Department adjoining the border with Panama, is a deep muck sixty-five kilometers in width. For years it has challenged engineers seeking to complete the Pan-American Highway. This stretch, near Turbo, where the highway is interrupted, is known as the Tapón del Chocó (Chocon Plug). + +A second major transportation project in Chocó Department has been proposed. A second inter-oceanic canal would be constructed by dredging the Río Atrato and tributary streams and digging short access canals. Completion of either of these projects would do much to transform this region, although it could have devastating consequences on the fragile, tropical forest environment. + +Orinoquía region + +The area east of the Andes includes about 699,300 square kilometers or three-fifths of the country's total area, but Colombians view it almost as an alien land. The entire area, known as the eastern plains, was home to only two percent of the country's population in the late 1980s. The Spanish term for plains (llanos) can be applied only to the open plains in the northern part, particularly the Piedmont areas near the Cordillera Oriental, where extensive cattle raising is practiced. + +The region is unbroken by highlands except in Meta Department, where the Serranía de la Macarena, an outlier of the Andes has unique vegetation and wildlife believed to be reminiscent of those that once existed throughout the Andes. + +Amazon region + +Many of the numerous large rivers of eastern Colombia are navigable. The Río Guaviare and the streams to its north flow eastward and drain into the basin of the Río Orinoco, a river that crosses into Venezuela and flows into the Atlantic Ocean. Those south of the Río Guaviare flows into the Amazon Basin. The Río Guaviare divides eastern Colombia into the llanos subregion in the north and the tropical rainforest, or selva, subregion in the south. + +Climate + +The striking variety in temperature and precipitation results principally from differences in elevation. Temperatures range from very hot at sea level to relatively cold at higher elevations but vary little with the season. At Bogotá, for example, the average annual temperature is , and the difference between the average of the coldest and the warmest months is less than 1 °C (1.8 °F). More significant, however, is the daily variation in temperature, from at night to during the day. + +Colombians customarily describe their country in terms of the climatic zones: the area under in elevation is called the hot zone (tierra caliente), elevations between are the temperate zone (tierra templada), and elevations from to about constitute the cold zone (tierra fría). The upper limit of the cold zone marks the tree line and the approximate limit of human habitation. The treeless regions adjacent to the cold zone and extending to approximately are high, bleak areas (usually referred to as the páramos), above which begins the area of permanent snow (nevado). + +About 86% of the country's total area lies in the hot zone. Included in the hot zone and interrupting the temperate area of the Andean highlands are the long and narrow extension of the Magdalena Valley and a small extension in the Cauca Valley. Temperatures, depending on elevation, vary between , and there are alternating dry and wet seasons corresponding to summer and winter, respectively. Breezes on the Caribbean coast, however, reduce both heat and precipitation. + +Rainfall in the hot zone is heaviest in the Pacific lowlands and in parts of eastern Colombia, where rain is almost a daily occurrence and rain forests predominate. Precipitation exceeds annually in most of the Pacific lowlands, making this one of the wettest regions in the world. The highest average annual precipitation in the world is estimated to be in Lloro, Colombia, with . In eastern Colombia, it decreases from in portions of the Andean Piedmont to eastward. Extensive areas of the Caribbean interior are permanently flooded, more because of poor drainage than because of the moderately heavy precipitation during the rainy season from May through October. + +The temperate zone covers about 8% of the country. This zone includes the lower slopes of the Cordillera Oriental and the Cordillera Central and most of the intermontane valleys. The important cities of Medellín () and Cali () are located in this zone, where rainfall is moderate and the mean annual temperature varies between , depending on the elevation. In the higher elevations of this zone, farmers benefit from two wet and two dry seasons each year; January through March and July through September are the dry seasons. + +The cold or cool zone constitutes about 6% of the total area, including some of the most densely populated plateaus and terraces of the Colombian Andes; this zone supports about one fourth of the country's total population. The mean temperature ranges between , and the wet seasons occur in April and May and from September to December, as in the high elevations of the temperate zone. + +Precipitation is moderate to heavy in most parts of the country; the heavier rainfall occurs in the low-lying hot zone. Considerable variations occur because of local conditions that affect wind currents, however, and areas on the leeward side of the Guajira Peninsula receive generally light rainfall; the annual rainfall of recorded at the Uribia station there is the lowest in Colombia. Considerable year-to-year variations have been recorded, and Colombia sometimes experiences droughts. + +Colombia's geographic and climatic variations have combined to produce relatively well-defined "ethnocultural" groups among different regions of the country: the Costeño from the Caribbean coast; the Caucano in the Cauca region and the Pacific coast; the Antioqueño in Antioquia, Caldas, Risaralda, and Valle del Cauca departments; the Tolimense in Tolima and Huila departments; the Cundiboyacense in the interior departments of Cundinamarca and Boyacá in the Cordillera Oriental; the Santandereano in Norte de Santander and Santander departments; and the Llanero in the eastern plains. Each group has distinctive characteristics, accents, customs, social patterns, and forms of cultural adaptation to climate and topography that differentiates it from other groups. Even with rapid urbanization and modernization, regionalism and regional identification continued to be important reference points, although they were somewhat less prominent in the 1980s than in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. + +Colombia's proximity to the equator influences its climates. The lowland areas are continuously hot. Altitude affects temperature greatly. Temperatures decrease about for every increase in altitude above sea level. Rainfall varies by location in Colombia, tending to increase as one travels southward. This is especially true in the eastern lowlands. For example, rainfall in parts of the Guajira Peninsula seldom exceeds per year. Colombia's rainy southeast, however, is often drenched by more than of rain per year. Rainfall in most of the rest of the country runs between these two extremes. + +Vegetation + +Altitude affects not only temperature, but also vegetation. In fact, altitude is one of the most important influences on vegetation patterns in Colombia. The mountainous parts of the country can be divided into several vegetation zones according to altitude, although the altitude limits of each zone may vary somewhat depending on the latitude. + +The "tierra caliente" (hot land), below , is the zone of tropical crops such as bananas. The tierra templada (temperate land), extending from an altitude of , is the zone of coffee and maize. Wheat and potatoes dominate in the "tierra fría" (cold land), at altitudes from . In the "zona forestada" (forested zone), which is located between , many of the trees have been cut for firewood. Treeless pastures dominate the páramos, or alpine grasslands, at altitudes of . Above , where temperatures are below freezing, is the "tierra helada", a zone of permanent snow and ice. + +Vegetation also responds to rainfall patterns. A scrub woodland of scattered trees and bushes dominates the semiarid northeast. To the south, savannah (tropical grassland) vegetation covers the Colombian portion of the llanos. The rainy areas in the southeast are blanketed by tropical rainforest. In the mountains, the spotty patterns of precipitation in alpine areas complicate vegetation patterns. The rainy side of a mountain may be lush and green, while the other side, in the rain shadow, may be parched. + +Relief + +The Andean range is located in Colombia from the southwest (Ecuador border) toward the northeast (Venezuela border) and is divided in the Colombian Massif (Macizo Colombiano) in three ranges (East Andes, Central Andes and West Andes) that form two long valleys, Magdalena and Cauca follow by the rivers of the same name. + +The eastern half of Colombia, comprising more than half its territory, is plain and composed by savanna and rainforest, crossed by rivers belonging to the Amazon and Orinoco basins. The northern part, called the Llanos, is a savanna region, mostly in the Orinoco basin (therefore called also Orinoquía). The southern part is covered by the Amazon rain forest and belongs mostly to the Amazon basin. It is usually called Amazonía. + +At the north and west of the Andes range there are some coastal plains. The Caribbean plains at the north and the Pacific plains at the west. + +A recent global remote sensing analysis suggested that there were 553km² of tidal flats in Colombia, making it the 46th ranked country in terms of tidal flat area. + +Colombian Pacific Plains are among the most rainy parts in the world, chiefly at the north (Chocó). + +The highest mountain in Colombia is not in the Andes but in the Caribbean plain: Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta with its highest points named Pico Cristobal Colon (5775 m) and Pico Simon Bolivar (same elevation). Other mountains in the Caribbean plain include the Montes de María and the Serranía de San Lucas. + +In the Pacific Plains there are other mountain formations, chiefly the Serranía del Darién and the Serranía del Baudó. + +In the eastern Region, there is the Serranía de la Macarena and there are formations belonging to the Guyana Shield. + +Protected areas + +Natural resources + +The natural resources of Colombia are varied and extensive with most of its territory and oceans still unexplored. Colombia has one of the largest open pit coal mines in the world in the region of Cerrejon in the Guajira Peninsula. It also has oil rigs and natural gas extraction in the eastern plains. Colombia is the main producer of emeralds and an important participant in gold, silver, iron, salt, platinum, petroleum, nickel, copper, hydropower and uranium extraction. + +Environmental issues + +The main environmental issues affecting Colombia are deforestation; soil and water quality damage from overuse of pesticides; air pollution, especially in Bogota, from vehicle emissions and other main cities. The collateral damaged produced by attacks against oil pipeline infrastructure by rebel guerrillas in the Colombian armed conflict has produced long term damage to the environment. The armed groups also deforest large areas to cultivate illegal crops and open unauthorized highways in protected areas. + +Extreme points + +Highest points + +Snowfields and glaciers in Colombia are limited to the highest peaks and ranges in the Cordillera Central and Cordillera Oriental and above the elevation on the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta. The total area of snowfields and glaciers was estimated to be about 104 square kilometers in the early 1970s. + +Historical, geographical, and pictorial records point toward a consistent and progressive depletion of ice-and-snow masses in the Colombian Andes since the end of the "Little Ice Age" in the late 1800s. Many glaciers have disappeared during the 20th century, and others are expected to disappear in the coming decades. + +Facts +Land size: +total: + +Land boundaries: +total: 6,672 km + +Coastline: +3,208 km (Caribbean Sea 1,760 km, North Pacific Ocean 1,448 km) + +Exclusive Economic Zone: +total: + +Climate: +tropical along coast and eastern plains; cooler in highlands + +Terrain: +flat coastal lowlands, central highlands, high Andes Mountains, eastern lowland plains + +Elevation extremes: +lowest point: Pacific Ocean 0 m +highest point: Pico Cristobal Colon 5,975 m +note: nearby Pico Simon Bolivar also has the same elevation + +Natural resources: +petroleum, natural gas, coal, iron ore, nickel, gold, copper, emeralds, hydropower + +Land use: +arable land: 1.43% +permanent crops: 1.68% +other: 96.89% (2012) + +Irrigated land: +10,870 km2 (2011) + +Total renewable water resources: +2,132 km3 (2011) + +Freshwater withdrawal (domestic/industrial/agricultural): +total: 12.65 km3 (55%/4%/41%) +per capita: 308 m3/yr (2010) + +Natural hazards: +highlands subject to volcanic eruptions; occasional earthquakes; periodic droughts + +Environment - international agreements: +party to: Antarctic Treaty, Biodiversity, Climate change, Climate Change-Kyoto Protocol, Desertification, Endangered Species, Hazardous Wastes, Marine Life Conservation, Ozone Layer Protection, Ship Pollution, Tropical Timber 83, Tropical Timber 94, Wetlands +signed, but not ratified: Law of the Sea + +Hydrology + +Colombia has four main drainage systems: the Pacific drain, the Caribbean drain, the Orinoco Basin and the Amazon Basin. + +The Orinoco and Amazon Rivers mark limits with Colombia to Venezuela and Peru respectively. + +Lakes + +Ciénaga Grande de Santa Marta +La Cocha Lagoon +Lake Tota + +See also + Valleys and Plateaus of Colombia + Environmental issues in Colombia + +References + +External links + Colombian Ministry of Environment + Map of the Republic of Colombia from 1891 +The politics of Colombia take place in a framework of a presidential representative democratic republic, whereby the President of Colombia is both head of state and head of government, and of a multi-party system. Executive power is carried out by the government. Legislative power is vested in both the government and the two chambers of congress, the Senate and the House of Representatives of Colombia. The Judiciary is independent of the executive and the legislature. + +Constitutional reforms +Colombia's present constitution, enacted on July 5, 1991, strengthened the administration of justice with the provision for introduction of an adversarial system which ultimately is to entirely replace the existing Napoleonic Code. Other significant reforms under the new constitution provide for civil divorce, dual nationality, the election of a vice president, and the election of departmental governors. The constitution expanded citizens' basic rights, including that of "tutela," under which an immediate court action can be requested by individuals feeling that their constitutional rights are being violated and if there is no other legal recourse. + +The national government has separate executive, legislative, and judicial branches. + +Executive branch + +The president is elected for a single four-year term. Between 2005 and 2015, the president could be re-elected for a second term. The 1991 constitution reestablished the position of vice president, who is elected on the same ticket as the president. By law, the vice president will succeed in the event of the president's resignation, illness, or death. + +Since 2015, the president is barred from running for reelection, even for a nonconsecutive term. + +Legislative branch + +Colombia's bicameral Congress consists of a 108-member Senate of Colombia and a 172-member Chamber of Representatives of Colombia. Senators are elected on the basis of a nationwide ballot, while representatives are elected in multi member districts co-located within the 32 national departments. The country's capital is a separate capital district and elects its own representatives. Members may be re-elected indefinitely, and, in contrast to the previous system, there are no alternate congressmen. Congress meets twice a year, and the president has the power to call it into special session when needed. + +Political parties and elections + +2018 Presidential election + +2018 Legislative Election + +Senate +{{#section-h:2018 Colombian par + +Chamber of Representatives + +Judicial branch + +The civilian judiciary is a separate and independent branch of government. Guidelines and the general structure for Colombia's administration of justice are set out in Law 270 of March 7, 1996. Colombia's legal system has recently begun to incorporate some elements of an oral, accusatory system. The judicial branch's general structure is composed of four distinct jurisdictions (ordinary, administrative, constitutional, and special). Colombia's highest judicial organs are the Supreme Court, the Council of State, the Constitutional Court, and the Superior Judicial Council. Although all the high courts technically oversee separate jurisdictions, the Constitutional Court has a broad spectrum of judicial oversight which often allows it to rule on issues overseen by different jurisdictions and even weigh in directly in the rulings of other high courts. + +International organization participation + +Global +United Nations +World Bank + +Other + +Regional + +References + +External links +House of Representatives of Colombia +Senate of Colombia +Presidency of Colombia +Supreme Court of Justice of Colombia + + + +de:Kolumbien#Politik +The economy of Colombia is the fourth largest in Latin America as measured by gross domestic product and the third-largest economic power in South America. Colombia has experienced a historic economic boom over the last decade. Throughout most of the 20th century, Colombia was Latin America's 4th and 3rd largest economy when measured by nominal GDP, real GDP, GDP (PPP), and real GDP at chained PPPs. Between 2012 and 2014, it became the 3rd largest in Latin America by nominal GDP. As of 2018, the GDP (PPP) per capita has increased to over US$14,000, and real gross domestic product at chained PPPs increased from US$250 billion in 1990 to nearly US$800 billion. Poverty levels were as high as 65% in 1990, but decreased to under 30% by 2014, and 27% by 2018. They decreased by an average of 1.35% per year since 1990. + +Petroleum is Colombia's main export, representing over 45% of Colombia's exports. Manufacturing represents nearly 12% of Colombia's exports, and grows at a rate of over 10% a year. Colombia has the fastest growing information technology industry in the world, and has the longest fibre optic network in Latin America. Colombia also has one of the largest shipbuilding industries in the world outside Asia. + +Modern industries like shipbuilding, electronics, automobile, tourism, construction, and mining, grew dramatically during the 2000s and 2010s. However, most of Colombia's exports are still commodity-based. Colombia is Latin America's 2nd-largest producer of domestically made electronics and appliances, following Mexico. Colombia had the fastest-growing major economy in the Western world in 2014, behind only China worldwide. + +Since the early 2010s, the Colombian government has shown interest in exporting modern Colombian pop culture to the world (which includes video games, music, films, television shows, fashion, cosmetics, and food) as a way of diversifying the economy and entirely changing the image of Colombia. This has inspired a national campaign, similar to the Korean Wave. Colombia is only behind Mexico in cultural exports, and is already a regional leader in cosmetic and beauty exports. + +Wealth is poorly distributed, since with a Gini index of approximately 0.̟6, Colombia is among the most unequal societies in the world. For example, according to the World Bank, in 2010 the richest 20% of the population owned 60.2% of the wealth and the poorest 20% only 3%, and 15.8% of Colombians lived on less than $2 a day. In 2021, more than 54% of Colombian families are food insecure and more than 560,000 children under the age of five are chronically undernourished. + +The informal economy is estimated at 47% in 2020. There is no welfare state in Colombia, which has almost no unemployment or pension insurance system. As a result, only one million elderly people have pensions (and five million are without) and social assistance is very low. Many people in their 70s and 80s are forced to continue working or beg. The country is said to be the most unequal in the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). + +History + +16th–19th centuries +European explorers reached what is now Colombian territory as early as 1510 in Santa María Antigua del Darién (in present-day Chocó department). For the next couple of decades Colombia, and South America in general, remained largely unexplored. From 1533 to 1600, Europeans began expeditions into the interior of current Colombia. The in of these expeditions was mainly to conquer new lands and exploit village resources. Legends of El Dorado that reached Spaniard explorers continued to fuel exploration and raiding of Indian villages. + +In the 17th century, Spanish conquerors explored Colombia and made the first settlements, and this was the beginning of Colombia's modern economic history. Major conquistadors from this period were Pedro de Heredia, Gonzalo Jimenez de Quesada, Sebastián de Belalcazar, and Nikolaus Federmann. + +During the 16th and 17th centuries, the colonial settlements in Colombia served purposes of extraction of precious metals and other natural resources, and later slavery trade. This economic arrangement left the Colony with little room for building solid institutionality for economic development. The main non-extractive institutions emerging in this centuries were the fortified port of Cartagena and the Viceroyalty of New Granada. Cartagena developed military defenses mainly out of necessity from frequently having to deal with pirate attacks. A primitive form of colonial administration was organized in Santa fé de Bogotá with the Viceroyalty of New Granada, especially under the tenure of José Solís Folch de Cardona (1753–1761), who conducted a census and built roads, bridges and aqueducts. + +Following the Thousand Days' War (1899–1902), Colombia experienced a coffee boom that catapulted the country into the modern period, bringing the attendant benefits of transportation, particularly railroads, communications infrastructure, and the first major attempts at manufacturing. + +20th century +Colombia's consistently sound economic policies and aggressive promotion of free trade agreements in recent years have bolstered its ability to weather external shocks. Real GDP has grown more than 4% per year for the past three years, continuing almost a decade of strong economic performance. + +In 1990, the administration of President César Gaviria Trujillo (1990–94) initiated economic liberalism policies or "apertura economica" and this has continued since then, with tariff reductions, financial deregulation, privatization of state-owned enterprises, and adoption of a more liberal foreign exchange rate. Almost all sectors became open to foreign investment although agricultural products remained protected. + +The original idea of his then Minister of Finance, Rudolf Homes, was that the country should import agricultural products in which it was not competitive, like maize, wheat, cotton and soybeans and export the ones in which it had an advantage, like fruits and flowers. In ten years, the sector lost 7,000 km2 to imports, with a critical impact on employment in rural areas. Still, this policy makes food cheaper for the average Colombian than it would be if agricultural trade were more restricted. + +Until 1997, Colombia had enjoyed a fairly stable economy. The first five years of liberalization were characterized by high economic growth rates of between 4% and 5%. The Ernesto Samper administration (1994–98) emphasized social welfare policies which targeted Colombia's lower income population. These reforms led to higher government spending which increased the fiscal deficit and public sector debt, the financing of which required higher interest rates. An over-valued peso inherited from the previous administration was maintained. + +The economy slowed, and by 1998 GDP growth was only 0.6%. In 1999, the country fell into its first recession since the Great Depression. The economy shrank by 4.5% with unemployment at over 20%. While unemployment remained at 20% in 2000, GDP growth recovered to 3.1%. Unemployment in 2020 has improved compared to two decades ago to 12.20%. + +The administration of President Andrés Pastrana Arango, when it took office on 7 August 1998, faced an economy in crisis, with the difficult internal security situation and global economic turbulence additionally inhibiting confidence. As evidence of a serious recession became clear in 1999, the government took a number of steps. It engaged in a series of controlled devaluations of the peso, followed by a decision to let it float. Colombia also entered into an agreement with the International Monetary Fund which provided a $2.7 billion guarantee (extended funds facility), while committing the government to budget discipline and structural reforms. + +21st century +By early 2000 there had been the beginning of an economic recovery, with the export sector leading the way, as it enjoyed the benefit of the more competitive exchange rate, as well as strong prices for petroleum, Colombia's leading export product. Prices of coffee, the other principal export product, have been more variable. + +Economic growth reached 3.1% during 2000 and inflation 9.0%. Inflation by 2021 has stabilized at 3.30%. Colombia's international reserves remained stable at around $8.35 billion in the year 2000 growing to $58.57 billion by 2021, and Colombia has successfully remained in international capital markets. Colombia's total foreign debt at the end of 1999 was $34.5 billion with $14.7 billion in private sector and $19.8 billion in public sector debt. Major international credit rating organizations had dropped Colombian sovereign debt below investment grade, primarily as a result of large fiscal deficits, which current policies are seeking to close. As of 2021 Colombia has recovered its investment grade rating. + +Former president Álvaro Uribe (elected 7 August 2002) introduced several neoliberal economic reforms, including measures designed to reduce the public-sector deficit below 2.5% of GDP in 2004. The government's economic policy and controversial democratic security strategy have engendered a growing sense of confidence in the economy, particularly within the business sector, and GDP growth in 2003 was among the highest in Latin America, at over 4%. This growth rate was maintained over the next decade, averaging 4.8% from 2004 to 2014. + +According to figures from Dane, monetary poverty went from 37.2% in 2010 to 26.9% in 2017, which indicates a higher income for the most vulnerable households. During the Santos government, there was an inflationary period that was also a response to the strong external shock of the fall in oil prices. It was a period of contained instability, although inflation increased, no company declared bankruptcy and there was no instability in the financial system. + +The Santos period managed an increase in GDP of 4% in 2010, which peaked in 2011 to 6.6%. Thereafter it remained at 4% in 2012, 4.9% in 2013 and 4.4% in 2014. In 2011, Colombia recovered it's BBB- investment grade, which was raised in 2013 to BBB. As a result of sustained growth, during the eight years of the Santos government, 3.5 million jobs were created, while 5.4 million people were lifted out of poverty. + +The focus of Santos' second term was to reach a peace agreement with the FARC whose economic effects, according to assumptions, could imply a GDP growth of up to two additional percentage points. Santos' best legacy is precisely the one related to security since this will have an effect in the medium and long term in terms of investment decisions, job creation, and the beginning of a great revolution in the country's infrastructure: war prevented development in the most affected areas for centuries. + +Colombia's President Iván Duque withdrew a controversial tax reform bill following four weeks of huge protests across the country starting 28 April 2021. In 2021, Colombia registered an increase in Gross Domestic Product of more than 10%, as a result of a rebound effect that derived from the 6.8% collapse a year earlier, caused by the economic closures decreed to stop the coronavirus pandemic. The pandemic exacerbated poverty. In 2021, official figures showed that 39% of Colombians -out of a population of 51.6 million inhabitants- were in a condition of monetary poverty. Although it shows a slight improvement compared to 2020 (42.5%), it meant a setback of at least a decade. + +The greatest increase in the value of the debt also occurred in the Duque government, according to figures from the Bank of the Republic. Between 2020 and 2021 the balance increased by 17 billion dollars, and from 2019 to 2020 it increased by 16 billion. That figure, which corresponds to a deficit of 7.1 percent of GDP, was the debt that the Central National Government or GNC (the State without its companies or regional entities) had in 2021, according to the fiscal closing bulletin. + +In the Duque government, specifically between May and June 2020, 66.7 percent of the country's gold reserves were sold, which went from 710.5 to 237.4 million dollars. The decision was made by the Bank of the Republic. The sale received criticism because although it was done at a time of rising prices – after five years in which this did not happen – it was before gold reached a record price. + +Overview + +The longstanding internal armed conflict in Colombia has had economic impacts. + +In the early 21st century, the Colombian economy grew in part because of austere government budgets, focused efforts to reduce public debt levels, an export-oriented growth strategy, an improved security situation in the country, and high commodity prices. Growth slowed to 1.4 percent in 2017, and then increased to 3.3 percent in 2019. + +President Uribe, who was in office from 2002 to 2010, examined opportunities including reforming the pension system, reducing high unemployment, achieving congressional passage of a fiscal transfers reform, and exploring for new oil or producing ethanol. Colombia's Gini coefficient, a measure of inequality, was one of the highest in South America. International and domestic financial analysts warned of the growing central government deficit, which hovered at 5% of GDP. Nonetheless, confidence in the economy grew. + +Colombia has a track record of prudent macroeconomic management. + +The middle class will represent 25% of the population in 2020 according to a survey by the daily newspaper El Tiempo. Official data indicate that 42.5% of the population lives below the poverty line. The social elevator is one of the slowest in the world, as it takes an average of eleven generations for a family to rise out of poverty. + +The tax system is one of the causes of Colombia's deep social inequalities. The income tax (IRPP) is not very progressive (almost all taxpayers pay it at a rate of between 19% and 28%, and the rate rises only slightly thereafter) and is levied mainly on salaries, with other categories of income being largely underreported. Redistribution through the Colombian tax system is thus the lowest in Latin America, even though it is on average very limited. + +Development of main indicators +The following table shows the main economic indicators in 1980–2019 (with IMF staff stimtates in 2020–2025). Inflation below 5% is in green. + +Graphics + +Labor rights +On 8 June 2020, the newly formed Employment Mission (Misión de Empleo) met for the first time to discuss labor reforms that it intended to propose to Congress. Some of these reforms had been desired for years, and others had come into starker view during the coronavirus pandemic. + +The legal working hours are 48 hours per week. However, the informal economy accounts for almost half of the workers, who are therefore not covered by labor laws. + +Agriculture + +Colombia is one of the 5 largest producers in the world of coffee, avocado and palm oil, and one of the 10 largest producers in the world of sugarcane, banana, pineapple and cocoa. + +Colombia produced, in 2018, 36.2 million tons of sugarcane (7th largest producer in the world), 5.8 million tons of palm oil (5th largest producer in the world), 3.7 million tons of banana (11th largest producer in the world) and 720 thousand tons of coffee (4th largest producer in the world, behind Brazil, Vietnam and Indonesia). Although its neighbor Brazil is the largest producer of coffee in the world (3.5 million tons produced in the same year), the advertising carried out by the country for decades suggests that Colombian coffee is of higher quality, which generates greater added value to the country's product. In the same year, Colombia produced 3.3 million tons of rice, 3.1 million tons of potato, 2.2 million tons of cassava, 1.3 million tons of maize, 900 thousand tons of pineapple, 670 thousand tons of onion, 527 thousand tons of tomato, 419 thousand tons of yam, 338 thousand tons of mango, 326 thousand tons of avocado, in addition to smaller productions of other agricultural products such as orange, tangerine, lemon, papaya, beans, carrot, coconut, watermelon etc. + +The share of agriculture in GDP has fallen consistently since 1945, as industry and services have expanded. However, Colombia's agricultural share of GDP decreased during the 1990s by less than in many of the world's countries at a similar level of development, even though the share of coffee in GDP diminished in a dramatic way. Agriculture has nevertheless remained an important source of employment, providing a fifth of Colombia's jobs in 2006. + +The most industrially diverse member of the five-nation Andean Community, Colombia has four major industrial centers—Bogota, Medellin, Cali, and Barranquilla, each located in a distinct geographical region. Colombia's industries include textiles and clothing, particularly lingerie, leather products, processed foods and beverages, paper and paper products, chemicals and petrochemicals, cement, construction, iron and steel products, and metalworking. Its diverse climate and topography permit the cultivation of a wide variety of crops. In addition, all regions yield forest products, ranging from tropical hardwoods in the hot country to pine and eucalyptus in the colder areas. + +Cacao beans, sugarcane, coconuts, bananas, plantains, rice, cotton, tobacco, cassava, and most of the nation's beef cattle are produced in the hot regions from sea level to 1,000 meters elevation. The temperate regions—between 1,000 and 2,000 meters—are better suited for coffee; cut flowers; maize and other vegetables; and fruits such as citrus, pears, pineapples, and tomatoes. The cooler elevations—between 2,000 and 3,000 meters—produce wheat, barley, potatoes, cold-climate vegetables, flowers, dairy cattle, and poultry. + +Livestock + +In the production of beef and chicken meat, Colombia is among the 20 largest producers in the world. + +In Colombia, the exploitation and breeding of cattle is carried out on small farms and large farms. Black-eared white, casanareño, coastal with horns, romosinuano, chino santandereano and hartón del Valle, are the Colombian breeds with the highest production. + +In 2013, livestock occupied 80% of productive land in Colombia. The livestock sector is one of the most outstanding in areas such as Caribbean Region, where seven departments have livestock as their primary vocation. Also in Antioquia, where there is the largest cattle inventory in the country, the department had that year 11% of the head of cattle in Colombia, and according to the livestock inventory, in 2012 Antioqueños counted around 2,268,000 head of cattle. + +Also in 2013, the bovine herd in Colombia reached 20.1 million head of cattle, of which 2.5 million (12.5%) were milking cows. In addition, the country's total milk production was 13.1 million liters. + +On the other hand, the increase in imports of pork meat, the high prices of inputs and the slowdown in the national economy, produced a crisis in the raising of pork in Colombia in 2015. + +Industry + +The World Bank lists the main producing countries each year, based on the total value of production. According to the 2019 list, Colombia has the 46th most valuable industry in the world (US$35.4 billion), behind Mexico, Brazil, Venezuela and Argentina, but ahead of Peru and Chile. + +Manufacturing + +Domestic appliances +Although Colombia has been producing domestic appliances since the 1930s, it wasn't until the late 1990s that Colombian corporations began exporting to neighboring countries. One of Colombia's largest producers of domestic appliances, HACEB has been producing refrigeration since 1940. Some domestic corporations include: Challenger, Kalley, HACEB, Imusa, and Landers. In 2011, Groupe SEB acquired Imusa as a form to expand to the Latin American market. Colombia also manufactures for foreign companies as well, such as Whirlpool and GE. LG has also been interested in building a plant in Colombia. Colombia is also Latin America's 3rd largest producer of appliances behind Mexico and Brazil and is growing rapidly. + +Electronics +Colombia is a major producer of electronics in Latin America, and is South America's 2nd largest high-tech market. Colombia is also the 2nd largest producer and exporter of electronics made by domestic companies in Latin America. Since the early 2000s, major Colombian corporations began exporting aggressively to foreign markets. Some of these companies include: Challenger, PcSmart, Compumax, Colcircuirtos, and Kalley. Colombia is the first country in Latin America to manufacture a domestically made 4K television. In 2014, the Colombian Government launched a national campaign to promote IT and Electronic sectors, as well as investing in Colombia's own companies. Although innovation remains low on the global scale, the government sees heavy potential in the high tech industry and is investing heavily in education and innovation centers all across the nation. Because of this, Colombia could become a major global manufacturer of electronics and play an important role in the global high tech industry in the near future. In 2014, the Colombian government released another national campaign to help Colombian companies have a bigger share of the national market. + +Construction +Construction recently has played a vital role in the economy, and is growing rapidly at almost 20% annually. As a result, Colombia is seeing a historic building boom. The Colombian government is investing heavily in transport infrastructure through a plan called "Fourth Generation Network". The target of the Colombian government is to build 7,000 km of roads for the 2016–2020 period and reduce travel times by 30% and transport costs by 20%. A toll road concession program will comprise 40 projects, and is part of a larger strategic goal to invest nearly $50bn in transport infrastructure, including: railway systems; making the Magdalena river navigable again; improving port facilities; as well as an expansion of Bogotá's airport. Long-term plans include building a national high-speed train network, to vastly improve competitiveness. + +Utilities + +Mining and energy + +Colombia is well-endowed with minerals and energy resources. It has the largest coal reserves in Latin America, and is second to Brazil in hydroelectric potential. Estimates of petroleum reserves in 1995 were . It also possesses significant amounts of nickel, gold, silver, platinum, and emeralds. + +The country was the 12th largest producer of coal in the world in 2018. In 2019, Colombia was the 20th largest petroleum producer in the world, with 791 thousand barrels / day. In mining, Colombia is the world's largest producer of emerald. + +The discovery of of high-quality oil at the Cusiana and Cupiagua fields, about east of Bogotá, has enabled Colombia to become a net oil exporter since 1986. The Transandino pipeline transports oil from Orito in the Department of Putumayo to the Pacific port of Tumaco in the Department of Nariño. Total crude oil production averages ; about is exported. The Pastrana government has significantly liberalized its petroleum investment policies, leading to an increase in exploration activity. Refining capacity cannot satisfy domestic demand, so some refined products, especially gasoline, must be imported. Plans for the construction of a new refinery are under development. + +While Colombia has vast hydroelectric potential, a prolonged drought in 1992 forced severe electricity rationing throughout the country until mid-1993. The consequences of the drought on electricity-generating capacity caused the government to commission the construction or upgrading of 10 thermoelectric power plants. Half will be coal-fired, and half will be fired by natural gas. The government also has begun awarding bids for the construction of a natural gas pipeline system that will extend from the country's extensive gas fields to its major population centers. Plans call for this project to make natural gas available to millions of Colombian households by the middle of the next decade. + +As of 2004, Colombia has become a net energy exporter, exporting electricity to Ecuador and developing connections to Peru, Venezuela and Panama to export to those markets as well. The Trans-Caribbean pipeline connecting western Venezuela to Panama through Colombia is also under construction, thanks to cooperation between presidents Álvaro Uribe of Colombia, Martín Torrijos of Panama and Hugo Chávez of Venezuela. Coal is exported to Turkey. + +Oil and coal account for 47% of goods exports in 2021. + +Human rights abuses in mining zones +The oil pipelines are a frequent target of extortion and bombing campaigns by the National Liberation Army (ELN) and, more recently, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC). The bombings, which have occurred on average once every 5 days, have caused substantial environmental damage, often in fragile rainforests and jungles, as well as causing significant loss of life. In April 1999 in Cartagena de Indias, Clinton's Secretary of Energy Bill Richardson spoke before investors from the United States, Canada and other countries. He expressed his government's willingness to use military aid to support the investment that they and their allies were going to make in Colombia, especially in strategically important sectors like mining and energy. + +In 2001 there were 170 attacks on the Caño Limón–Coveñas pipeline. The pipeline was out of operation for over 200 days of that year; the government estimates that these bombings reduced Colombia's GDP by 0.5%. The government of the United States increased military aid, in 2003, to Colombia to assist in the effort to defend the pipeline. Occidental Petroleum privately contracted mercenaries who flew Skymaster planes, from AirScan International Inc., to patrol the Cano Limon-Covenas pipeline. Many of these operations used helicopters, equipment and weapons provided by the U.S. military and anti-narcotics aid programs. + +Mining and natural exploitation has had environmental consequences. The region of Guajira is undergoing an accelerated desertification with the disappearances of forests, land, and water sources, due to the increase in coal production. Social consequences or lack of development in resource rich areas is common. 11 million Colombians survive on less than one dollar a day. Over 65% of these live in mining zones. There are 3.5 million children out of school, and the most critical situation is in the mining zone of Choco, Bolivar, and Sucre. + +Economic consequences of privatization and liberal institutions have meant changes in taxation to attract foreign investment. Colombia will lose another $800 million over the next 90 years that Glencore International operates in El Cerrejon Zona Media, if the company continues to produce coal at a rate of 5 million tons/year, because of the reduction of the royalty tax from 10 to 15% to .04%. If the company, as is plausible, doubles or triples its production, the losses will be proportionally greater. The operational losses from the three large mining projects (El Cerrejon, La Loma, operated by Drummond, and Montelíbano, which produces ferronickel) for Colombia to more than 12 billion. + +Coal production has grown rapidly, from 22.7 million tons in 1994 to 50.0 million tons in 2003. Over 90% of this amount was exported, making Colombia the world's sixth largest coal exporter, behind Australia, China, Indonesia, South Africa and Russia. From the mid-1980s the center of coal production was the Cerrejón mines in the Guajira department. However, the growth in output at La Loma in neighboring Cesar Department made this area the leader in Colombian coal production since 2004. Production in other departments, including Boyacá, Cundinamarca and Norte de Santander, forms about 13% of the total. The coal industry is largely controlled by international mining companies, including a consortium of BHP, Anglo American and Glencore at Cerrejón, and Conundrum Company at La Loma, which is undergoing a lawsuit in the U.S. District Court in Alabama for union assassinations and alleged paramilitary links. + +Foreign investment +Various attempts to open up the economy during the 1993-2023 period have been described by Portafolio as been "half-hearted". In 1990, to attract foreign investors and promote trade, an experiment from the International Monetary Fund known as "La Apertura" was adopted by the government, this policy was to modernize different sectors of the economy to increase the overall efficiency of production so as to bring down prices to internationally competitive levels. Although the analysis of the results are not clear, the fact is that the agricultural sector was severely impacted by this policy. + +In 1991 and 1992, the government passed laws to stimulate foreign investment in nearly all sectors of the economy. The only activities closed to foreign direct investment are defense and national security, disposal of hazardous wastes, and real estate—the last of these restrictions is intended to hinder money laundering. Colombia established a special entity—Converter—to assist foreigners in making investments in the country. Foreign investment flows for 1999 were $4.4 billion, down from $4.8 billion in 1998. + +Major foreign investment projects underway include the $6 billion development of the Cusiana and Cupiagua oil fields, development of coal fields in the north of the country, and the recently concluded licensing for establishment of cellular telephone service. The United States accounted for 26.5% of the total $19.4 billion stock of non-petroleum foreign direct investment in Colombia at the end of 1998. + +On 21 October 1995, under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA), President Clinton signed an Executive Order barring U.S. entities from any commercial or financial transactions with four Colombian drug kingpins and with individuals and companies associated with the traffic in narcotics, as designated by the Secretary of the Treasury in consultation with the Secretary of State and the Attorney General. The list of designated individuals and companies is amended periodically and is maintained by the Office of Foreign Asset Control at the Department of the Treasury, tel. (202) 622-0077 (ask for Document #1900). The document also is available at the Department of Treasury web site. + +Colombia is the United States' fifth-largest export market in Latin America—behind Mexico, Brazil, Venezuela, and Argentina—and the 26th-largest market for U.S. products worldwide. The United States is Colombia's principal trading partner, with two-way trade from November 1999 through November 2000 exceeding $9.5 billion--$3.5 billion U.S. exports and $6.0 billion U.S. imports. Colombia benefits from duty-free entry—for a 10-year period, through 2001—for certain of its exports to the United States under the Andean Trade Preferences Act. Colombia improved protection of intellectual property rights through the adoption of three Andean Pact decisions in 1993 and 1994, but the U.S. remains concerned over deficiencies in licensing, patent regulations, and copyright protection. + +Colombia is also the largest export partner of the Dutch constituent country of Aruba (39.4%). + +The petroleum and natural gas coal mining, chemical, and manufacturing industries attract the greatest U.S. investment interest. U.S. investment accounted for 37.8% ($4.2 billion) of the total $11.2 billion in foreign direct investment at the end of 1997, excluding petroleum and portfolio investment. Worker rights and benefits in the U.S.-dominated sectors are more favorable than general working conditions. Examples include shorter-than-average working hours, higher wages, and compliance with health and safety standards above the national average. + +Tertiary industries +The services sector dominates Colombia's GDP, contributing 58 percent of GDP in 2007, and, given worldwide trends, its dominance will probably continue. The sector is characterized by its heterogeneity, being the largest for employment (61 percent), in both the formal and informal sectors. + +Arts and music +Since the early 2010s, the Colombian government has shown interest in exporting modern Colombian pop culture to the world (which includes video games, music, movies, TV shows, fashion, cosmetics, and food) as a way of diversifying the economy and changing the image of Colombia. In the Hispanic world, Colombia is only behind Mexico in cultural exports at US$750 million annually, and is already a regional leader in cosmetic and beauty exports. + +Travel and tourism +Tourism in Colombia is an important sector in the country's economy. Colombia has major attractions as a tourist destination, such as Cartagena and its historic surroundings, which are on the UNESCO World Heritage List; the insular department of San Andrés, Providencia y Santa Catalina; Santa Marta, Cartagena and the surrounding area. Fairly recently, Bogotá, the nation's capital, has become Colombia's major tourist destination because of its improved museums and entertainment facilities and its major urban renovations, including the rehabilitation of public areas, the development of parks, and the creation of an extensive network of cycling routes. With its very rich and varied geography, which includes the Amazon and Andean regions, the llanos, the Caribbean and Pacific coasts, and the deserts of La Guajira, and its unique biodiversity, Colombia also has major potential for ecotourism. + +The direct contribution of Travel & Tourism to GDP in 2013 was COP11,974.3mn (1.7% of GDP). This is forecast to rise by 7.4% to COP12,863.4mn in 2014. This primarily reflects the economic activity generated by industries such as hotels, travel agents, airlines and other passenger transportation services (excluding commuter services). But it also includes, for example, the activities of the restaurant and leisure industries directly supported by tourists. The direct contribution of Travel & Tourism to GDP is expected to grow by 4.1% pa to COP19,208.4mn (1.8% of GDP) by 2024. + +The number of tourists in Colombia grows by over 12% every year. Colombia is projected to have over 15 million tourists by 2023. + +Eco-tourism +Eco-tourism is very promising in Colombia. Colombia has vast coastlines, mountainous areas, and tropical jungles. There are volcanoes and waterfalls as well. This makes Colombia a biodiverse country with many attractions for foreign visitors. + +The Colombian coffee growing axis (Spanish: Eje Cafetero), also known as the Coffee Triangle (Spanish: Triángulo del Café), is a part of the Colombian Paisa region in the rural area of Colombia, which is famous for growing and production of a majority of Colombian coffee, considered by some as the best coffee in the world. There are three departments in the area: Caldas, Quindío and Risaralda. These departments are among the smallest departments in Colombia with a total combined area of 13873 km2 (5356 mi2), about 1.2% of the Colombian territory. The combined population is 2,291,195 (2005 census). + +Transportation and telecommunications + +Colombia's geography, with three cordilleras of the Andes running up the country from south to north, and jungle in the Amazon and Darién regions, represents a major obstacle to the development of national road networks with international connections. Thus, the basic nature of the country's transportation infrastructure is not surprising. In the spirit of the 1991 constitution, in 1993 the Ministry of Public +Works and Transportation was reorganized and renamed the Ministry of Transportation. In 2000 the new ministry strengthened its role as the planner and regulator within the sector. + +Air transportation +Colombia was a pioneer in promoting airlines in an effort to overcome its geographic barriers to transportation. The Colombian Company of Air Navigation, formed in 1919, was the second commercial airline in the world. It was not until the 1940s that Colombia's air transportation began growing significantly in the number of companies, passengers carried, and kilometers covered. In the early 2000s, an average of 72 percent of the passengers transported by air go to national destinations, while 28 percent travel internationally. One notable feature is that after the reforms of the beginning of the 1990s, the number of international passengers tripled by 2003. In 1993 the construction, administration, operation, and maintenance of the main airports transferred to departmental authorities and the private sector, including companies specializing in air transportation. Within this process, in 2006 the International Airport Operator (Opain), a Swiss-Colombian consortium, won the concession to manage and develop Bogotá's El Dorado International Airport. El Dorado is the largest airport in Latin America in terms of cargo traffic (33rd worldwide), with 622,145 metric tons in 2013, second in terms of traffic movements (45th worldwide) and third in terms of passengers (50th among the busiest airports in the world). In addition to El Dorado, Colombia's international airports are Palo Negro in Bucaramanga, Simón Bolívar in Santa Marta, Cortissoz in Barranquilla, Rafael Núñez in Cartagena, José María Córdova in Rionegro near Medellín, Alfonso Bonilla Aragón in Cali, Alfredo Vásquez Cobo in Leticia, Matecaña in Pereira, Gustavo Rojas Pinilla in San Andrés, and Camilo Daza in Cúcuta. In 2006 Colombia was generally reported to have a total of 984 airports, of which 103 had paved runways and 883 were unpaved. The Ministry of Transportation listed 581 airports in 2007, but it may have used a different methodology for counting them. + +Poverty and inequality +After a large crisis in 1999, poverty in Colombia has had a decreasing trend. The share of Colombians below the income-based poverty line fell from 50% in 2002 to 28% in 2016. The share of Colombians below the extreme income-based poverty line fell from 18% to 9% in the same period. Multidimensional poverty fell from 30% to 18% between 2010 and 2016. + +Colombia has a Gini coefficient of 51.7. + +Retail +Hypermarkets and big-box stores are losing market participation in Colombian retail. + +Debt +Between 1976 and 2006, Colombia's debt doubled every 10 years: in 1976 it was about $3.6 billion, in 1986 it was $7.2 billion, in 1996 it was over $16 billion and in 2006 it was over $36 billion. Since 2006, the growth of the debt has accelerated: it reached $72 billion in 2011 and reached $124 billion in 2017, which means that in less than 10 years Colombia's foreign debt has tripled. About a quarter of Colombia's annual budget, or $20 billion, goes to pay off the public debt. + +Corruption +Corruption in public management in Colombia is widespread and structural in nature. This situation generates losses for the country estimated at around 15 billion dollars. Colombia has not escaped the scandals involving millions of dollars in bribes from the Brazilian construction company Odebrecht, as well as the Cartagena refinery, a case of embezzlement of public funds that came to light in 2016 and involved members of the governments of Álvaro Uribe (2002-2010) and Juan Manuel Santos (2010-2018). + +See also + + Taxation in Colombia + WWB Colombia + Economic history of Colombia + List of companies of Colombia + Colombia and the World Bank + Economy of South America + List of Colombian departments by GDP + List of Latin American and Caribbean countries by GDP growth + List of Latin American and Caribbean countries by GDP (nominal) + List of Latin American and Caribbean countries by GDP (PPP) + 20,000 Colombian peso note + 50,000 Colombian peso note + +References + +External links + Colombia Economy report – official Investment portal + + +Colombia +OECD member economies +Since being liberalized in 1991, the Colombian telecommunications sector has added new services, expanded coverage, improved efficiency, and lowered costs. The sector has had the second largest (after energy) investment in infrastructure (54 percent) since 1997. However, the economic downturn between 1999 and 2002 adversely affected telecommunications. During this period, Colombia's telecommunications industry lost US$2 billion despite a profit of US$1 billion in local service. In June 2003, the government liquidated the state-owned and heavily indebted National Telecommunications Company (Empresa Nacional de Telecomunicaciones—Telecom) and replaced it with Colombia Telecomunicaciones (Colombia Telecom). The measure enabled the industry to expand rapidly, and in 2004 it constituted 2.8 percent of gross domestic product (GDP). Telefónica of Spain acquired 50 percent plus one share of the company in 2006. + +As a result of increasing competition, Colombia has a relatively modern telecommunications infrastructure that primarily serves larger towns and cities. Colombia's telecommunication system includes access to 8 different international Submarine cable systems, INTELSAT, 11 domestic satellite Earth stations, and a nationwide microwave radio relay system. + +Telephones +The country's teledensity (the density of telephone lines in a community) is relatively high for Latin America (17 percent in 2006). However, there is a steep imbalance between rural and urban areas, with some regions below 10 percent and the big cities exceeding 30 percent. Bogotá, Medellín, and Cali account for about 50 percent of telephone lines in use. By the end of 2005, the number of telephone main lines in use totaled 7,851,649. Colombia Telecom accounted for only about 31 percent of these lines; 27 other operators accounted for the rest. + +Colombia's mobile market is one of the fastest-growing businesses in the country. In 1993, the first mobile phone call was made. In mid-2004 mobile telephones overtook fixed lines in service for the first time. By 2005 Colombia had the highest mobile phone density (90 percent) in Latin America, as compared with the region's average density of 70 percent. The number of mobile telephone subscribers totaled an estimated 31 million in 2007, as compared to 21.8 million in 2005 and 6.8 million in 2001. + +Radio and television + +In late 2004, Radio Televisión Nacional de Colombia (RTVC) replaced the liquidated Inravisión (Instituto Nacional de Radio y Televisión) as the government-run radio and television broadcasting service, which oversees three national television stations and five radio companies (which operate about a dozen principal networks). Colombia has about 60 television stations, including seven low-power stations. In 2000 the population had about 11.9 million television receivers in use. Of the approximately 515 radio stations, 454 are AM; 34, FM; and 27, shortwave. + +Undersea Cables +As of 2016, Colombia has access to the following international Submarine cable systems: SAC/LAN, Maya-1, AMX-1, Pan Am, SAm-1, ARCOS-1, CFX-1, and PCCS. These cables land at 4 locations in the Caribbean: Barranquilla, Cartagena, Riohacha, and Tolu. One cable lands on the Pacific Ocean coast at Buenaventura, Valle del Cauca. + +Internet + +Colombia is still far behind Brazil, Mexico, and Argentina in terms of online usage. It had an estimated total of 900,000 Internet subscribers by the end of 2005, a figure that equated to 4,739,000 Internet users, or 11.5 percent of the 2005 population (10.9 per 100 inhabitants). By late 2009 39% of households had internet access Colombia had 581,877 Internet hosts in 2006. Although as many as 70 percent of Colombians accessed the Internet over their ordinary telephone lines, dial-up access is losing ground to broadband. In 2005 Colombia had 345,000 broadband subscriber lines, or one per 100 inhabitants. In 2006 the number of personal computers per 1,000 people increased to an estimated 87 per 1,000 inhabitants, a rate still below that in other large Latin American economies. The internet country code is .co. + +References + + Internetworldstats.com + +External links + Colombian Ministry of Communications + Comunicate.com.co, Coldecon, Internet Provider + + +Colombia +Transport in Colombia is regulated by the Ministry of Transport. + +Road travel is the main means of transport; 69 percent of cargo is transported by road, as compared with 27 percent by railroad, 3 percent by internal waterways, and 1 percent by air. + +History + +Indigenous peoples influence + +The indigenous peoples in Colombia used and some continue to use the waterways as the way of transportation using rafts and canoes. + +Spanish influence +With the arrival of the Europeans the Spaniards brought the horses, mules and donkey (which developed into the Paso Fino) used by them in ranching duties later in the Spanish colonization of the Americas. Horses contributed greatly to the transport of the Spanish conquerors and colonizers. They also introduced the wheel, and brought wooden carts and carriages to facilitate their transport. The Spaniards also developed the first roads, rudimentary and most of these in the Caribbean region. Due to the rough terrain of Colombia communications between regions was difficult and affected the effectiveness of the central government creating isolation in some regions. Maritime navigation developed locally after Spain lifted its restrictions on ports within the Spanish Empire inducing mercantilism. Spanish also transported African slaves and forcedly migrated many indigenous tribes throughout Colombia. + +Post-independence +With the independence and the influences of the European Industrial Revolution the main way of transport in Colombia became the navigation mainly through the Magdalena River which connected Honda in inland Colombia, with Barranquilla by the Caribbean sea to the trade with the United States and Europe. This also brought a large wave of immigrants from European and Middle Eastern countries. The industrialization process and transportation in Colombia were affected by the internal civil wars that surged after the independence from Spain and that continued throughout the 19th and 20th centuries. + +Standardization +During the late 19th century European and American companies introduced railways to carry to the ports the local production of raw materials intended for exports and also imports from Europe. Steam ships began carrying Colombians, immigrants and goods from Europe and the United States over the Magdalena River. + +The Ministry of Transport was created in 1905 during the presidency of Rafael Reyes under the name of Ministerio de Obras Públicas y Transporte or Ministry of Public Works and Transport with the main function of taking care of national assets issues, including mines, oil (fuel), patents and trade marks, railways, roads, bridges, national buildings and land without landowners. + +In the early 20th century roads and highways maintenance and construction regulations were established. Rivers were cleaned, dragged and channeled and the navigational industry was organized. The Public works districts were created, as well as the Ferrocarriles Nacionales de Colombia (National Railways of Colombia). Among other major projects developed were the aqueduct of Bogotá, La Regadera Dam and the Vitelma Water Treatment Plant. The Ministry also created the National Institute of Transit (from the Spanish Instituto Nacional de Tránsito), (INTRA) under the Transport and tariffs Directorate and was in charge of designing the first National roads plan with the support of many foreign multinational construction companies. + +Aviation was born in Barranquilla with the creation of SCADTA in 1919 a joint venture between Colombians and Germans that delivered mail to the main cities of Colombia which later merged with SACO to form Avianca. + +Infrastructure + +Railways + +Colombia has of rail lines, of which are gauge and of which are gauge. However, only of lines are still in use. Rail transport in Colombia remains underdeveloped. The national railroad system, once the country's main mode of transport for freight, has been neglected in favor of road development and now accounts for only about a quarter of freight transport. Passenger-rail use was suspended in 1992 resumed at the end of the 1990s, and as of 2017 it is considered abandoned (at least for long distances). Fewer than 165,000 passenger journeys were made in 1999, as compared with more than 5 million in 1972, and the figure was only 160,130 in 2005. The two still-functioning passenger trains are: one between Puerto Berrío and García Cadena, and another one between Bogotá and Zipaquirá. Short sections of railroad, mainly the Bogotá-Atlantic rim, are used to haul goods, mostly coal, to the Caribbean and Pacific ports. In 2005 a total of 27.5 million metric tons of cargo were transported by rail. Although the nation's rail network links seven of the country's 10 major cities, very little of it has been used regularly because of security concerns, lack of maintenance, and the power of the road transport union. During 2004–6, approximately 2,000 kilometers of the country's rail lines underwent refurbishment. This upgrade involved two main projects: the 1,484-kilometer line linking Bogotá to the Caribbean Coast and the 499-kilometer Pacific coastal network that links the industrial city of Cali and the surrounding coffee-growing region to the port of Buenaventura. + +Roads + +The three main north–south highways are the Caribbean, Eastern, and Central Trunk Highways (troncales). Estimates of the length of Colombia's road system in 2004 ranged from 115,000 kilometers to 145,000 kilometers, of which fewer than 15 percent were paved. However, according to 2005 data reported by the Colombian government, the road network totaled 163,000 kilometers, 68 percent of which were paved and in good condition. The increase may reflect some newly built roads. President Uribe has vowed to pave more than 2,500 kilometers of roads during his administration, and about 5,000 kilometers of new secondary roads were being built in the 2003–6 period. Despite serious terrain obstacles, almost three-quarters of all cross-border dry cargo is now transported by road, 105,251 metric tons in 2005. + +Highways are managed by the Colombian Ministry of Transport through the National Roads Institute. The security of the highways in Colombia is managed by the Highway Police unit of the Colombian National Police. Colombia is crossed by the Panamerican Highway. + +Ports, waterways, and merchant marine + +Seaports handle around 80 percent of international cargo. In 2005 a total of 105,251 metric tons of cargo were transported by water. Colombia's most important ocean terminals are Barranquilla, Cartagena, and Santa Marta on the Caribbean Coast and Buenaventura and Tumaco on the Pacific Coast. Exports mostly pass through the Caribbean ports of Cartagena and Santa Marta, while 65 percent of imports arrive at the port of Buenaventura. Other important ports and harbors are Bahía de Portete, Leticia, Puerto Bolívar, San Andrés, Santa Marta, and Turbo. Since privatization was implemented in 1993, the efficiency of port handling has increased greatly. Privatization, however, has had negative impacts as well. In Buenaventura, for example, privatization of the harbor has increased unemployment and social issues. There are plans to construct a deep-water port at Bahía Solano. + +The main inland waterways total about 18,200 kilometers, 11,000 kilometers of which are navigable by riverboats. A well-developed and important form of transport for both cargo and passengers, inland waterways transport approximately 3.8 million metric tons of freight and more than 5.5 million passengers annually. Main inland waterways are the Magdalena–Cauca River system, which is navigable for 1,500 kilometers; the Atrato, which is navigable for 687 kilometers; the Orinoco system of more than five navigable rivers, which total more than 4,000 kilometers of potential navigation (mainly through Venezuela); and the Amazonas system, which has four main rivers totaling 3,000 navigable kilometers (mainly through Brazil). The government is planning an ambitious program to more fully utilize the main rivers for transport. In addition, the navy's riverine brigade has been patrolling waterways more aggressively in order to establish safer river transport in the more remote areas in the south and east of the country. + +The merchant marine totals 17 ships (1,000 gross registered tons or more), including four bulk, 13 cargo, one container, one liquefied gas, and three petroleum tanker ships. Colombia also has seven ships registered in other countries (Antigua and Barbuda, two; Panama, five). + +Civil Aviation + +The Special Administrative Unit of Civil Aeronautics is responsible of regulating and controlling the use of air space by civil aviation. The customs/immigration issues are controlled by the Departamento Administrativo de Seguridad (DAS). + +Colombia has well-developed air routes and an estimated total of 984 airports, 100 of which have paved runways, plus two heliports. Of the 74 main airports, 20 can accommodate jet aircraft. Two airports are more than 3,047 meters in length, nine are 2,438–3,047 meters, 39 are 1,524–2,437 meters, 38 are 914–1,523 meters, 12 are shorter than 914 meters, and 880 have unpaved runways. The government has been selling its stake in local airports in order to allow their privatization. The country has 40 regional airports, and the cities of Bogotá, Medellín, Cali, Barranquilla, Bucaramanga, Cartagena, Cúcuta, Leticia, Pereira, Armenia, San Andrés, and Santa Marta have international airports. Bogotá's El Dorado International Airport handles 550 million metric tons of cargo and 22 million passengers a year, making it the largest airport in Latin America in terms of cargo and the third largest in passenger numbers. + +Urban transport + +Urban transport systems have been developed in Barranquilla, Bogotá, Cali, and Medellín. Traffic congestion in Bogotá had been greatly exacerbated by a lack of rail transport; however, this problem was alleviated, to a degree, by the formation of one of the world's most expansive and highest-capacity bus rapid transit (BRT) systems—known as the TransMilenio (opened 2000)—and the restriction of vehicles through a daily, rotating ban on private cars (depending on plate numbers). Bogotá's BRT consists of bus and minibus services managed by both private- and public-sector enterprises. + +Since 1995, Medellín has had a modern urban railway, the Metro de Medellín, utilizing two train lines with 27 stations. The Metro also connects with the cities of Itagüí, Envigado, and Bello. An elevated gondola-cablecar system, the Metrocable, opened in 2004 to improve Metro accessibility for some of the city's more isolated, dense barrios. The gondola design was specifically chosen due to the mountainous geography of the city, with most of the neighborhoods served being reasonably higher in elevation from the city center. A BRT line called Transmetro began operating in 2011, with a second line added in 2013. + +Other Colombian cities have also installed BRT systems, such as Cali, with a six-line system (opened 2008), Barranquilla with two lines (opened 2010), Bucaramanga with one line (opened 2010), Cartagena with one line (opened 2015) and Pereira, with three lines (opened 2006). A future light rail line in Barranquilla is planned. + +Pipelines +Colombia has 4,350 kilometers of gas pipelines, 6,134 kilometers of oil pipelines, and 3,140 kilometers of refined-products pipelines. The country has five major oil pipelines, four of which connect with the Caribbean export terminal at Puerto Coveñas. Until at least September 2005, the United States funded efforts to help protect a major pipeline, the 769-kilometer-long Caño Limón–Puerto Coveñas pipeline, which carries about 20 percent of Colombia's oil production to Puerto Coveñas from the guerrilla-infested Arauca region in the eastern Andean foothills and Amazonian jungle. The number of attacks against pipelines began declining substantially in 2002. In 2004 there were only 17 attacks against the Caño Limón–Puerto Coveñas pipeline, down from 170 in 2001. However, a bombing in February 2005 shut the pipeline for several weeks, and attacks against the electrical gird system that provides energy to the Caño Limón oilfield have continued. New oil pipeline projects with Brazil and Venezuela are underway. In addition, the already strong cross-border trade links between Colombia and Venezuela were solidified in July 2004 with an agreement to build a US$320 million natural gas pipeline between the two countries, to be completed in 2008. + +See also + + Megabús + Railway stations in Colombia + +References + +External links + + Colombian Ministry of Transport + Invias - Colombian National Institute of Highways + Colombian Maritime and Fluvial Port Authority + Colombian Civil Aerospace Authority +The Military Forces of Colombia () are the unified armed forces of the Republic of Colombia. They consist of the Colombian Army, the Colombian Navy and the Colombian Aerospace Force. The National Police of Colombia, although technically not part of the military, is controlled and administered by the Ministry of National Defence, and national conscription also includes service in the National Police, thus making it a de facto gendarmerie and a branch of the military. The President of Colombia is the military's commander in chief, and helps formulate defense policy through the Ministry of National Defence, which is in charge of day-to-day operations. + +The Military Forces of Colombia have their roots in the Army of the Commoners (), which was formed on 7 August 1819 – before the establishment of the present day Colombia – to meet the demands of the Revolutionary War against the Spanish Empire. After their triumph in the war, the Army of the Commoners disbanded, and the Congress of Angostura created the Gran Colombian Army to replace it, thus establishing the first military service branch of the country. + +The Colombian military was operationally involved in World War II and was the only Latin American country to send troops to the Korean War. Ever since the advent of the Colombian Conflict, the Colombian military has been involved in combat, pacification, counter-insurgency, and drug interdiction operations all over the country's national territory. Recently it has participated in counter-piracy efforts in the Horn of Africa under Operation Ocean Shield and Operation Atlanta. + +The military of Colombia is the third largest in the Western Hemisphere in terms of active personnel and has the fourth largest expenditure in the Americas, behind the United States Armed Forces, the Canadian Armed Forces and the Brazilian Armed Forces respectively. + +Services +The Colombian Constitution includes two overlapping definitions of what could be defined as 'armed forces' in English: + The Public Force (): Includes the Military Forces proper and the National Police (Title VII, chapter VII, Art. 216) + The Military Forces (): Includes only the 3 major military service branches: Army, Navy and Aerospace Force (Title VII, chapter VII, Art. 217) + +This is a subtle yet important distinction, both in terms of emphasizing the civil nature of the National Police, but also adapting the national police to function as a paramilitary force which can perform military duties as a result of the Colombian Conflict. This has led to some of the most important police units adopting military training and conducting special operations alongside the Colombian Army, Aerospace Force, and Navy. Therefore, the functions of the Colombian Police in practical terms are similar to those of a gendarmerie, like the Spanish Civil Guard and the Carabineros de Chile, which maintain military ranks for all police personnel. + +Personnel + +The Colombian armed forces consist of: +Military Forces: + Colombian Army + Colombian Navy – and attached services Marines and Colombian Coast Guard + Colombian Aerospace Force +And, + National Police of Colombia + +Public Force strength as of April 2014. + +Dependencies + Military Medical Corps ('') – Medical and Nurse Corps + Indumil () – Military Industry Depot + Military Sports Federation () + Military Printing () + Military Museum () – History of the Armed Forces of Colombia + Superior War College (Escuela Superior de Guerra (Colombia) ESDEGUE) + +Funding +In 2000, Colombia assigned 3.9% of its GDP to defense. By 2008 this figure had risen to 4.8%, ranking it 14th in the world. The armed forces number about 250,000 uniformed personnel: 145,000 military and 105,000 police. These figures do not include assistance personnel such as cooks, medics, mechanics, and so on. This makes the Colombian military one of the largest and most well-equipped in Latin America. Many Colombian military personnel have received military training assistance directly in Colombia and also in the United States. The United States has provided equipment and financing to the Colombian military and police through the military assistance program, foreign military sales, and the international narcotics control program, all currently united under the auspices of Plan Colombia. + +World factbook statistics +Military manpower – military service age and obligation: 18 years of age for compulsory and voluntary military service; conscript service obligation – 24 months (2004) +Military manpower – availability: +males age 18–49: 10,212,456 +females age 18–49: 10,561,562 (2005 estimate) +Military manpower – fit for military service: +males age 18–49: 6,986,228 +females age 18–49: 8,794,465 (2005 estimate) +Military manpower – reaching military age annually: +males age 18–49: 389,735 +females age 18–49: 383,146 (2005 estimate) + +Rank Insignia + +See also + AFEUR + Colombia + Colombian Army + Colombian military decorations + Indumil + Joint Task Force OMEGA + Military ranks of the Colombian Armed Forces + +References and notes +Includes 435 sub-officers and 3,125 agents +Includes 123,125 executive personnel and 23,562 Auxiliary conscript + +External links + Ministerio de Defensa de Colombia – Official Ministry of Defense site + Comando General de las Fuerzas Militares – Official Armed Forces General Command + Ejército Nacional de Colombia – Official Army site + Ejército Nacional de Colombia – Official Army site + Armada Nacional de Colombia – Official Navy site () + Fuérza Aeroespacial Colombiana – Official Aerospace Force site + Policía Nacional de Colombia – Official National Police site + UNFFMM – Unofficial site of the Colombian Military Forces + +Other Links + Colombian Military expenditure + +Bibliography + +Military of Colombia +Ministry of National Defense (Colombia) + +fr:Armée nationale colombienne +The history of Colombia includes the settlements and society by indigenous peoples, most notably, the Muisca Confederation, Quimbaya Civilization, and Tairona Chiefdoms; the Spanish arrived in 1492 and initiated a period of annexation and colonization, most noteworthy being Spanish conquest; ultimately creating the Viceroyalty of New Granada, with its capital at Bogotá. Independence from Spain was won in 1819, but by 1830 the "Gran Colombia" Federation was dissolved. What is now Colombia and Panama emerged as the Republic of New Granada. The new nation experimented with federalism as the Granadine Confederation (1858), and then the United States of Colombia (1863), before the Republic of Colombia was finally declared in 1886; as well as constant political violence in the country. Panama seceded in 1903. Since the 1960s, the country has suffered from an asymmetric low-intensity armed conflict, which escalated in the 1990s, but then decreased from 2005 onward. The legacy of Colombia's history has resulted in a rich cultural heritage; while varied geography, and the imposing landscape of the country has resulted in the development of very strong regional identities. + +Pre-Colombian period + +From approximately 12,000 years BP onwards, hunter-gatherer societies existed near present-day Bogotá (at El Abra and Tequendama), and they traded with one another and with cultures living in the Magdalena River valley. Due to its location, the present territory of Colombia was a corridor of early human migration from Mesoamerica and the Caribbean to the Andes and the Amazon basin. The oldest archaeological finds are from the Pubenza archaeological site and El Totumo archaeological site in the Magdalena Valley southwest of Bogotá. These sites date from the Paleoindian period (18,000–8000 BCE). At Puerto Hormiga archaeological site and other sites, traces from the Archaic period in South America (~8000–2000 BCE) have been found. Vestiges indicate that there was also early occupation in the regions of El Abra, Tibitó and Tequendama in Cundinamarca. The oldest pottery discovered in the Americas, found at San Jacinto archaeological site, dates to 5000–4000 BCE. +Indigenous people inhabited the territory that is now Colombia by 10,500 BCE. Nomadic hunter-gatherer tribes at the El Abra and Tequendama sites near present-day Bogotá traded with one another and with other cultures from the Magdalena River Valley. + +Serranía La Lindosa, a mountainous region of Guaviare Department is known for an extensive prehistoric rock art site which stretches for nearly eight miles. The site, near to the Guayabero River was discovered in 2019, but was not revealed to the public until 2020. There are tens of thousands of paintings of animals and humans created up to 12,500 BP. Images of now-extinct ice age animals, such as the mastodon, helped date the site. Other ice-age animals depicted include the palaeolama, giant sloths and ice age horses. The site has gone undiscovered because of a conflict between the government and the Farc. The remote site is a two-hour drive from San José del Guaviare, followed by a four hour trek. The site was discovered by a team from National University of Colombia, University of Antioquia and the University of Exeter as part of a project funded by European Research Council as part of the Horizon 2020 Framework Programmes for Research and Technological Development. The site is to be featured in episode 2 of the Channel 4 series, Jungle Mystery: Lost Kingdoms of the Amazon, on 12 December 2020. + +Between 5000 and 1000 BCE, hunter-gatherer tribes transitioned to agrarian societies; fixed settlements were established, and pottery appeared. Beginning in the 1st millennium BCE, groups of Amerindians including the Muisca, Quimbaya, Tairona, Calima, Zenú, Tierradentro, San Agustín, Tolima, and Urabá became skilled in farming, mining, and metalcraft; and some developed the political system of cacicazgos with a pyramidal structure of power headed by caciques. The Muisca inhabited mainly the area of what is now the Departments of Boyacá and Cundinamarca high plateau (Altiplano Cundiboyacense) where they formed the Muisca Confederation. The Muisca had one of the most developed political systems (Muisca Confederation) in South America, surpassed only by the Incas. They farmed maize, potato, quinoa and cotton, and traded gold, emeralds, blankets, ceramic handicrafts, coca and especially salt with neighboring nations. The Tairona inhabited northern Colombia in the isolated Andes mountain range of Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta. The Quimbaya inhabited regions of the Cauca River Valley between the Western and Central Ranges. The Incas expanded their empire on the southwest part of the country. + +Spanish annexation + +Pre-Columbian history + +Europeans first visited the territory that became Colombia in 1499 when the first expedition of Alonso de Ojeda arrived at the Cabo de la Vela. The Spanish made several attempts to settle along the north coast of today's Colombia in the early 16th century, but their first permanent settlement, at Santa Marta, dates from 1525. The Spanish commander Pedro de Heredia founded Cartagena on June 1, 1533 in the former location of the indigenous Caribbean Calamarí village. Cartagena grew rapidly, fueled first by the gold in the tombs of the Sinú Culture, and later by trade. The thirst for gold and land lured Spanish explorers to visit Chibchan-speaking areas; resulting in the Spanish conquest of the Chibchan Nations - the conquest by the Spanish monarchy of the Chibcha language-speaking nations, mainly the Muisca and Tairona who inhabited present-day Colombia, beginning the Spanish colonization of the Americas. + +The Spanish advance inland from the Caribbean coast began independently from three different directions, under Jimenéz de Quesáda, Sebastián de Benalcázar (known in Colombia as Belalcázar) and Nikolaus Federmann. Although all three were drawn by the Indian treasures, none intended to reach Muisca territory, where they finally met. +In August 1538, Quesáda founded Santa Fe de Bogotá on the site of Muisca village of Bacatá. + +In 1549, the institution of the Spanish Royal Audiencia in Bogotá gave that city the status of capital of New Granada, which comprised in large part what is now the territory of Colombia. As early as the 1500s however, secret anti-Spanish discontentment was already brewing for Colombians since Spain prohibited direct trade between the Viceroyalty of Peru, which included Colombia, and the Viceroyalty of New Spain, which included the Philippines the source of Asian products like silk and porcelain which was in demand in the Americas. Illegal trade between Peruvians, Filipinos, and Mexicans continued in secret, as smuggled Asian goods ended up in Córdoba, Colombia, the distribution center for illegal Asian imports, due to the collusion between these peoples against the authorities in Spain. They settled and traded with each other while disobeying the forced Spanish monopoly in more expensive silks and porcelain made in homeland Spain. In 1717, the Viceroyalty of New Granada was originally created, and then it was temporarily removed, to finally be reestablished in 1739. The Viceroyalty had Santa Fé de Bogotá as its capital. This Viceroyalty included some other provinces of northwestern South America which had previously been under the jurisdiction of the Viceroyalties of New Spain or Peru and correspond mainly to today's Venezuela, Ecuador and Panama. So, Bogotá became one of the principal administrative centers of the Spanish possessions in the New World, along with Lima and Mexico City. + +Gran Colombia: independence re-claimed + +From then on, the long independence struggle was led mainly by Bolívar and Francisco de Paula Santander in neighboring Venezuela. Bolívar returned to New Granada only in 1819 after establishing himself as leader of the pro-independence forces in the Venezuelan llanos. From there he led an army over the Andes and captured New Granada after a quick campaign that ended at the Battle of Boyacá, on August 7, 1819. (For more information, see Military career of Simón Bolívar.) + +That year, the Congress of Angostura established the Republic of Gran Colombia, which included all territories under the jurisdiction of the former Viceroyalty of New Granada. Bolívar was elected the first president of Gran Colombia and Santander, vice president. + +As the Federation of Gran Colombia was dissolved in 1830, the Department of Cundinamarca (as established in Angostura) became a new country, the Republic of New Granada. + +The Republic: Liberal and Conservative conflict + +In 1863 the name of the Republic was changed officially to "United States of Colombia", and in 1886 the country adopted its present name: "Republic of Colombia". + +Two political parties grew out of conflicts between the followers of Bolívar and Santander and their political visions—the Conservatives and the Liberals – and have since dominated Colombian politics. Bolívar's supporters, who later formed the nucleus of the Conservative Party, sought strong centralized government, alliance with the Roman Catholic Church, and a limited franchise. Santander's followers, forerunners of the Liberals, wanted a decentralized government, state rather than church control over education and other civil matters, and a broadened suffrage. + +Throughout the 19th and early 20th centuries, each party held the presidency for roughly equal periods of time. Colombia maintained a tradition of civilian government and regular, free elections. The military has seized power three times in Colombia's history: in 1830, after the dissolution of Great Colombia; again in 1854 (by General José María Melo); and from 1953 to 1957 (under General Gustavo Rojas Pinilla). Civilian rule was restored within one year in the first two instances. + +Notwithstanding the country's commitment to democratic institutions, Colombia's history has also been characterized by widespread, violent conflict. Two civil wars resulted from bitter rivalry between the Conservative and Liberal parties. The Thousand Days' War (1899–1902) cost an estimated 100,000 lives, and up to 300,000 people died during "La Violencia" of the late 1940s and 1950s, a bipartisan confrontation which erupted after the assassination of Liberal popular candidate Jorge Eliécer Gaitán. United States activity to influence the area (especially the Panama Canal construction and control) led to a military uprising in the Isthmus Department in 1903, which resulted in the separation and independence of Panama. + +A military coup in 1953 toppled the right-wing government of Conservative Laureano Gómez and brought General Gustavo Rojas Pinilla to power. Initially, Rojas enjoyed considerable popular support, due largely to his success in reducing "La Violencia". When he did not restore democratic rule and occasionally engaged in open repression, however, he was overthrown by the military in 1957 with the backing of both political parties, and a provisional government was installed. + +The National Front regime (1958–1974) + +In July 1957, former Conservative President Laureano Gómez (1950–1953) and former Liberal President Alberto Lleras (1945–1946, 1958–1962) issued the "Declaration of Sitges," in which they proposed a "National Front," whereby the Liberal and Conservative parties would govern jointly. The presidency would be determined by an alternating conservative and liberal president every 4 years for 16 years; the two parties would have parity in all other elective offices. + +The National Front ended "La Violencia", and National Front administrations attempted to institute far-reaching social and economic reforms in cooperation with the Alliance for Progress. In particular, the Liberal president Alberto Lleras Camargo (1958–1962) created the Colombian Institute for Agrarian Reform (INCORA), and Carlos Lleras Restrepo (1966–1970) further developed land entitlement. In 1968 and 1969 alone, the INCORA issued more than 60,000 land titles to farmers and workers. + +In the end, the contradictions between each successive Liberal and Conservative administration made the results decidedly mixed. Despite the progress in certain sectors, many social and political injustices continued. + +The National Front system itself eventually began to be seen as a form of political repression by dissidents and even many mainstream voters, and many protesters were victimized during this period. Especially after what was later confirmed as the fraudulent election of Conservative candidate Misael Pastrana in 1970, which resulted in the defeat of the relatively populist candidate and former president (dictator) Gustavo Rojas Pinilla. The M-19 guerrilla movement, "Movimiento 19 de Abril" (19 April Movement), would eventually be founded in part as a response to this particular event. The FARC was formed in 1964 by Manuel Marulanda Vélez and other Marxist–Leninist supporters, after a military attack on the community of Marquetalia. + +Although the system established by the Sitges agreement was phased out by 1974, the 1886 Colombian constitution — in effect until 1991—required that the losing political party be given adequate and equitable participation in the government which, according to many observers and later analysis, eventually resulted in some increase in corruption and legal relaxation. The current 1991 constitution does not have that requirement, but subsequent administrations have tended to include members of opposition parties. + +Post-National Front +From 1974 until 1982, different presidential administrations chose to focus on ending the persistent insurgencies that sought to undermine Colombia's traditional political system. Both groups claimed to represent the poor and weak against the rich and powerful classes of the country, demanding the completion of true land and political reform, from an openly Communist perspective. + +By 1974, another challenge to the state's authority and legitimacy had come from 19th of April Movement (M-19), a mostly urban guerrilla group founded in response to an alleged electoral fraud during the final National Front election of Misael Pastrana Borrero (1970–1974) and the defeat of former dictator Gustavo Rojas Pinilla. Initially, the M-19 attracted a degree of attention and sympathy from mainstream Colombians that the FARC and National Liberation Army (ELN) had found largely elusive earlier due to extravagant and daring operations, such as stealing a sword that had belonged to Colombia's Independence hero Simon Bolívar. At the same time, its larger profile soon made it the focus of the state's counterinsurgency efforts. + +The ELN guerrilla had been seriously crippled by military operations in the region of Anorí by 1974, but it managed to reconstitute itself and escape destruction, in part due to the administration of Alfonso López Michelsen (1974–1978) allowing it to escape encirclement, hoping to initiate a peace process with the group. + +By 1982, the perceived passivity of the FARC, together with the relative success of the government's efforts against the M-19 and ELN, enabled the administration of the Liberal Party's Julio César Turbay (1978–1982) to lift a state-of-siege decree that had been in effect, on and off, for most of the previous 30 years. Under the latest such decree, president Turbay had implemented security policies that, though of some military value against the M-19 in particular, were considered highly questionable both inside and outside Colombian circles due to numerous accusations of military human rights abuses against suspects and captured guerrillas. + +Citizen exhaustion due to the conflict's newfound intensity led to the election of president Belisario Betancur (1982–1986), a Conservative who won 47% of the popular vote, directed peace feelers at all the insurgents, and negotiated a 1984 cease-fire with the FARC and M-19 after a 1982 release of many guerrillas imprisoned during the previous effort to overpower them. The ELN rejected entering any negotiation and continued to recover itself through the use of extortions and threats, in particular against foreign oil companies of European and U.S. origin. + +As these events were developing, the growing illegal drug trade and its consequences were also increasingly becoming a matter of widespread importance to all participants in the Colombian conflict. Guerrillas and newly wealthy drug lords had mutually uneven relations and thus numerous incidents occurred between them. Eventually, the kidnapping of drug cartel family members by guerrillas led to the creation of the 1981 Muerte a Secuestradores (MAS) death squad ("Death to Kidnappers"). Pressure from the U.S. government and critical sectors of Colombian society was met with further violence, as the Medellín Cartel and its hitmen, bribed or murdered numerous public officials, politicians and others who stood in its way by supporting the implementation of extradition of Colombian nationals to the U.S. Victims of cartel violence included Justice Minister Rodrigo Lara, whose assassination in 1984 made the Betancur administration begin to directly oppose the drug lords. + +The first negotiated cease-fire with the M-19 ended when the guerrillas resumed fighting in 1985, claiming that the cease-fire had not been fully respected by official security forces, saying that several of its members had suffered threats and assaults, and also questioning the government's real willingness to implement any accords. The Betancur administration, in turn, questioned the M-19's actions and its commitment to the peace process, as it continued to advance high-profile negotiations with the FARC, which led to the creation of the Patriotic Union (Colombia) (UP), a legal and non-clandestine political organization. + +On November 6, 1985, the M-19 stormed the Colombian Palace of Justice and held the Supreme Court magistrates hostage, intending to put president Betancur on trial. In the ensuing crossfire that followed the military's reaction, scores of people lost their lives, as did most of the guerrillas, including several high-ranking operatives. Both sides blamed each other for the outcome. + +Meanwhile, individual FARC members initially joined the UP leadership in representation of the guerrilla command, though most of the guerrilla's chiefs and militiamen did not demobilize nor disarm, as that was not a requirement of the process at that point in time. Tension soon significantly increased, as both sides began to accuse each other of not respecting the cease-fire. Political violence against FARC and UP members (including presidential candidate Jaime Pardo) was blamed on drug lords and also on members of the security forces (to a much lesser degree on the argued inaction of Betancur administration). Members of the government and security authorities increasingly accused the FARC of continuing to recruit guerrillas, as well as kidnapping, extorting and politically intimidating voters even as the UP was already participating in politics. + +The Virgilio Barco (1986–1990) administration, in addition to continuing to handle the difficulties of the complex negotiations with the guerrillas, also inherited a particularly chaotic confrontation against the drug lords, who were engaged in a campaign of terrorism and murder in response to government moves in favor of their extradition overseas. The UP also suffered an increasing number of losses during this term (including the assassination of presidential candidate Bernardo Jaramillo), which stemmed both from private proto-paramilitary organizations, increasingly powerful drug lords and a number of would-be paramilitary-sympathizers within the armed forces. + +Post-1990 +Following administrations had to contend with the guerrillas, paramilitaries, narcotics traffickers and the violence and corruption that they all perpetuated, both through force and negotiation. Narcoterrorists assassinated three presidential candidates before César Gaviria was elected in 1990. Since the death of Medellín cartel leader Pablo Escobar in a police shootout during December 1993, indiscriminate acts of violence associated with that organization have abated as the "cartels" have broken up into multiple, smaller and often-competing trafficking organizations. Nevertheless, violence continues as these drug organizations resort to violence as part of their operations but also to protest government policies, including extradition. + +The M-19 and several smaller guerrilla groups were successfully incorporated into a peace process as the 1980s ended and the 1990s began, which culminated in the elections for a Constituent Assembly of Colombia that would write a new constitution, which took effect in 1991. The new Constitution, brought about a considerable number of institutional and legal reforms based on principles that the delegates considered as more modern, humanist, democratic and politically open than those in the 1886 constitution. Practical results were mixed and mingled emerged (such as the debate surrounding the constitutional prohibition of extradition, which later was reversed), but together with the reincorporation of some of the guerrilla groups to the legal political framework, the new Constitution inaugurated an era that was both a continuation and a gradual, but significant, departure from what had come before. + +Contacts with the FARC, which had irregularly continued despite the generalized de facto interruptions of the ceasefire and the official 1987 break from negotiations, were temporarily cut off in 1990 under the presidency of César Gaviria (1990–1994). The Colombian Army's assault on the FARC's Casa Verde sanctuary at La Uribe, Meta, followed by a FARC offensive that sought to undermine the deliberations of the Constitutional Assembly, began to highlight a significant break in the uneven negotiations carried over from the previous decade. + +President Ernesto Samper assumed office in August 1994. However, a political crisis relating to large-scale contributions from drug traffickers to Samper's presidential campaign diverted attention from governance programs, thus slowing, and in many cases, halting progress on the nation's domestic reform agenda. The military also suffered several setbacks in its fight against the guerrillas, when several of its rural bases began to be overrun and a record number of soldiers and officers were taken prisoner by the FARC (which since 1982 was attempting to implement a more "conventional" style of warfare, seeking to eventually defeat the military in the field). + +On August 7, 1998, Andrés Pastrana was sworn in as the President of Colombia. A member of the Conservative Party, Pastrana defeated Liberal Party candidate Horacio Serpa in a run-off election marked by high voter turnout and little political unrest. The new president's program was based on a commitment to bring about a peaceful resolution of Colombia's longstanding civil conflict and to cooperate fully with the United States to combat the trafficking of illegal drugs. + +While early initiatives in the Colombian peace process gave reason for optimism, the Pastrana administration also has had to combat high unemployment and other economic problems, such as the fiscal deficit and the impact of global financial instability on Colombia. During his administration, unemployment has risen to over 20%. Additionally, the growing severity of countrywide guerrilla attacks by the FARC and ELN, and smaller movements, as well as the growth of drug production, corruption and the spread of even more violent paramilitary groups such as the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia (AUC) has made it difficult to solve the country's problems. + +Although the FARC and ELN accepted participation in the peace process, they did not make explicit commitments to end the conflict. The FARC suspended talks in November 2000, to protest what it called "paramilitary terrorism" but returned to the negotiating table in February 2001, following 2 days of meetings between President Pastrana and FARC leader Manuel Marulanda. The Colombian Government and ELN in early 2001 continued discussions aimed at opening a formal peace process. + +From 2004 and on + +By 2004, the security situation of Colombia had shown some measure of an improvement, and the economy, while still fragile, had also shown some positive signs. On the other hand, relatively little had been accomplished in structurally solving most of the country's other grave problems, in part due to legislative and political conflicts between the administration and the Colombian Congress (including those over the controversial 2006 project to give President Álvaro Uribe the right to be re-elected), and a relative lack of freely allocated funds and credits. In October 2006, Uribe was re-elected by a landslide. + +Some critical observers consider in retrospect that Uribe's policies, while admittedly reducing crime and guerrilla activity, were too slanted in favor of a military solution to Colombia's internal war, neglecting grave social and human rights concerns to a certain extent. They hoped that Uribe's government would make serious efforts towards improving the human rights situation inside the country, protecting civilians and reducing any abuses committed by the armed forces. + +Uribe's supporters in turn believed that increased military action was a necessary prelude to any serious negotiation attempt with the guerrillas and that the increased security situation would help the government, in the long term, to focus more actively on reducing most wide-scale abuses and human rights violations on the part of both the armed groups and any rogue security forces that might have links to the paramilitaries. In short, these supporters maintained that the security situation needed to be stabilized in favor of the government before any other social concerns could take precedence. In February 2010, the constitutional court blocked President Alvaro Uribe from seeking for a new re-election. Uribe left the presidency in 2010. + +In 2010 Juan Manuel Santos was elected president; he was supported by ex-president Uribe, and, in fact, he owed his election mainly through having won over former Uribe supporters. But two years after winning the presidential election, Santos (to widespread surprise) began peace talks with FARC, which took place in Havana. Re-elected in 2014, Santos revived an important infrastructure program, which in fact had been planned during the Uribe administration. Focused mainly on the provision of national highways, the program was led by former vice-president Germán Vargas Lleras. + +In 2015, Colombia's Congress limited presidency to single term, preventing the president from seeking re-election. + +Talks between the government and the guerrillas resulted in the announcement of a peace agreement. However, a referendum to ratify the deal was unsuccessful. Afterward, the Colombian government and the FARC signed a revised peace deal in November 2016, which the Colombian congress approved. In 2016, President Santos was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. The Government began a process of attention and comprehensive reparation for victims of conflict. Colombia under President Santos showed some progress in the struggle to defend human rights, as expressed by HRW. A Special Jurisdiction of Peace was created to investigate, clarify, prosecute and punish serious human rights violations and grave breaches of international humanitarian law which occurred during the armed conflict and to satisfy victims' right to justice. During his visit to Colombia, Pope Francis paid tribute to the victims of the conflict. + +In May 2018, Ivan Duque, the candidate of the conservative Centro Democrático (Democratic Centre), won the presidential election. On 7 August 2018, he was sworn in as the new President of Colombia. + +Colombia's relations with Venezuela have fluctuated due to the ideological differences between both governments. Colombia has offered humanitarian support with food and medicines to mitigate the shortage of supplies in Venezuela. Colombia's Foreign Ministry said that all efforts to resolve Venezuela's crisis should be peaceful. Colombia proposed the idea of the Sustainable Development Goals and a final document was adopted by the United Nations. In February 2019, Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro cut diplomatic relations with Colombia after Colombian President Ivan Duque helped Venezuelan opposition politicians deliver humanitarian aid to their country. Colombia recognized Venezuelan opposition leader Juan Guaido as the country's legitimate president. In January 2020, Colombia rejected Maduro's proposal that the two countries restore diplomatic relations. + +The 19 June 2022 election run-off vote ended in a win for former guerrilla, Gustavo Petro, taking 50.47% of the vote compared to 47.27% of right-wing Rodolfo Hernández. The single-term limit for the country's presidency prevented president Iván Duque from seeking re-election. Petro became the country’s first leftist president-elect. On 7 August 2022, he was sworn in. + +See also + + Colombia during World War II + Economic history of Colombia + History of the Americas + History of Latin America + History of South America + List of presidents of Colombia + Politics of Colombia + Spanish colonization of the Americas + +References + +Bibliography + +Further reading + + Alesina, Alberto, ed. Institutional reforms: The case of Colombia (MIT press, 2005). + Earle, Rebecca. Spain and the Independence of Colombia, 1810–1825. Exeter: University of Exeter Press, 2000. + Echavarría, Juan José, María Angélica Arbeláez, and Alejandro Gaviria. "Recent economic history of Colombia." in Institutional Reforms: The Case of Colombia (2005): 33-72. + Echeverry, Juan Carlos, et al. "Oil in Colombia: history, regulation and macroeconomic impact." Documento CEDE 2008-10 (2008). online + Etter, Andrés, Clive McAlpine, and Hugh Possingham. "Historical patterns and drivers of landscape change in Colombia since 1500: a regionalized spatial approach." Annals of the Association of American Geographers 98.1 (2008): 2-23. + Farnsworth-Alvear, Ann. Dulcinea in the Factory: Myths, Morals, Men, and Women in Colombia's Industrial Experiment, 1905–1960. Duke University Press 2000. + Fisher, J.R. Allan J. Kuethe, and Anthony McFarlane. Reform and Insurrection in Bourbon New Granada and Peru. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press 1990. + Flores, Thomas Edward. "Vertical inequality, land reform, and insurgency in Colombia." Peace Economics, Peace Science and Public Policy 20.1 (2014): 5-31. online + Harvey, Robert. "Liberators: Latin America's Struggle for Independence, 1810–1830". John Murray, London (2000). + Kuethe, Allan J. Military Reform and Society in New Granada, 1773–1808. Gainesville: University of Florida Press 1978. + LeGrand, Catherine. Frontier Expansion and Peasant Protest in Colombia, 1850–1936. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press 1986. + López-Pedreros, A. Ricardo. Makers of democracy: a transnational history of the middle classes in Colombia (Duke University Press, 2019). + McFarlane, Anthony. Colombia Before Independence: Economy, Society, and Politics under Bourbon Rule. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993. + Martz, John D. The politics of clientelism in Colombia: Democracy and the state (Routledge, 2017). + Murillo, Mario A., and Jesus Rey Avirama. Colombia and the United States: war, unrest, and destabilization (Seven Stories Press, 2004). + Phelan, John Leddy. The People and the King: The Comunero Revolt in Colombia, 1781. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press 1978. + Racine, Karen. "Simón Bolívar and friends: Recent biographies of independence figures in Colombia and Venezuela" History Compass 18#3 (Feb 2020) https://doi.org/10.1111/hic3.12608 + Roldán, Mary. Blood and Fire: La Violencia in Antioquia, Colombia 1946–1953. Durham: Duke University Press 2002. + Safford, Frank. Colombia: Fragmented Land, Divided Society. New York: Oxford University Press 2002. + Sharp, William Frederick. Slavery on the Spanish Frontier: The Colombia Chocó, 1680–1810. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press 1976. + Thorp, Rosemary, and Francisco Durand. "8. A Historical View of Business-State Relations: Colombia, Peru, and Venezuela Compared." in Business and the state in developing countries. (Cornell University Press, 2018) pp. 216–236. + Twinam, Ann. Miners, Merchants, and Farmers in Colonial Colombia. Austin: University of Texas Press 1983. + West, Robert C. Colonial Placer Mining in Colombia. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press 1952. + +In Spanish + + Arciniegas, Germán. Los comuneros. Caracas: Bibliotecta Ayacucho 1992. + Colmenares, Germán. Historia económica y social de Colombia, 1537–1719. Cali 1973. + González, Margarita. El resguardo en el Nuevo Reino de Granada. 3rd edition. Bogotá: El Ancora 1992. + +External links + + U.S. State Department Background Note: Colombia +Colombia seeks diplomatic and commercial relations with all countries, regardless of their ideologies or political or economic systems. For this reason, the Colombian economy is quite open, relying on international trade and following guidelines given by international law. + +Since 2008, Colombia's Ministry of Trade and Commerce has either reached or strengthened Bilateral Trade Agreements with South Korea, Japan and China building stronger commerce interchange and development in the Pacific Rim. + +Regional relations have also vastly improved under the Santos Administration (2010–2018). Issues however remain regarding spillover of the FARC leftist-terrorist group, being chased out of hiding in rural areas of Colombia and finding safe havens in non-monitored areas of bordering states. The FARC numbers have significantly diminished in the last decade, to an estimated 5,000–7,000. And while joint military collaboration has steadily increased with the bordering countries of Brazil, Panama, Peru, and Venezuela, there have been tensions between Colombia and Ecuador regarding the issue. In 2002, the Ecuadorian government closed its main border crossing with Colombia, restricting its hours of operation. Ecuador continues to voice its concerns over an influx of émigrés stemming from guerilla activity at its borders. Evidence has since emerged however, suggesting that a significant number of the FARC's foot soldiers in and around the Colombia–Ecuador border consist of Ecuadorian émigrés who joined the leftist terrorist group out of need. Returning Ecuadorian émigrés have faced re-entry restrictions. + +In 2012, relations with Nicaragua and Venezuela were tested over territorial island disputes. Bilateral committees are negotiating the dispute with Venezuela over waters in the Gulf of Venezuela. + +Background +In 1969, Colombia formed what is now the Andean Community along with Bolivia, Chile, Ecuador, and Peru (Venezuela joined in 1973, and Chile left in 1976). + +In the 1980s, Colombia broadened its bilateral and multilateral relations, joining the Contadora Group, the Group of Eight (now the Rio Group), and the Non-Aligned Movement, which it chaired from 1994 until September 1998. In addition, it has signed free trade agreements with Chile, Mexico, and Venezuela. + +Colombia has traditionally played an active role in the United Nations and the Organization of American States and in their subsidiary agencies. Former President César Gaviria became Secretary General of the OAS in September 1994 and was reelected in 1999. Colombia was a participant in the December 1994 and April 1998 Summits of the Americas and followed up on initiatives developed at the summit by hosting two post-summit, ministerial-level meetings on trade and science and technology. + +Colombia regularly participates in international fora, including CICAD, the Organization of American States' body on money laundering, chemical controls, and drug abuse prevention. Although the Colombian Government ratified the 1988 UN Convention on Narcotics in 1994—the last of the Andean governments to do so—it took important reservations, notably to the anti-money-laundering measures, asset forfeiture and confiscation provisions, maritime interdiction, and extradition clauses. Colombia subsequently withdrew some of its reservations, most notably a reservation on extradition. + +International relations + +Disputes – international +Maritime boundary dispute with Venezuela in the Gulf of Venezuela; territorial disputes with Nicaragua over Archipelago de San Andrés y Providencia and Quita Sueño Bank. The United States disputes sovereignty with Colombia over the Serranilla Bank and the Bajo Nuevo Bank. Quita Sueño Bank is claimed by the United States to be a submerged reef, and thus does not recognize the sovereignty of any nation over the bank. + +Membership of international organizations +The major organizations in which Colombia is a member include: the Agency for the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons in Latin America and the Caribbean, Andean Pact, Caribbean Development Bank Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean, Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, Group of 3, Group of 11, Group of 24, Group of 77, Inter-American Development Bank, International Atomic Energy Agency, International Bank for Reconstruction and Development, International Chamber of Commerce, International Civil Aviation Organization, International Criminal Police Organization (Interpol), International Development Association, International Finance Corporation, International Fund for Agricultural Development, International Labour Organization, International Maritime Organization, International Maritime Satellite Organization, International Monetary Fund (IMF), International Olympic Committee, International Organization for Migration, International Organization for Standardization, International Telecommunication Union, International Telecommunications Satellite Organization, International Trade Union Confederation, Latin American Economic System, Latin American Integration Association, Non-Aligned Movement, Organization of American States (OAS), Permanent Court of Arbitration, Rio Group, United Nations (UN), UN Conference on Trade and Development, UNESCO, UN Industrial Development Organization, UN Office of the High Commissioner for Refugees, Universal Postal Union, World Confederation of Labour, World Federation of Trade Unions, World Health Organization, World Intellectual Property Organization, World Meteorological Organization, World Tourism Organization, and World Trade Organization. An OAS observer has monitored the government's peace process with the paramilitaries, lending the negotiations much-needed international credibility. The United States helps Colombia secure favorable treatment from the IMF. + +Major international treaties +Regional treaties include the Andean Pact, now known as the Andean Community, which also includes Bolivia, Ecuador, and Peru, the bodies and institutions making up the Andean Integration System (AIS). Colombia has signed free-trade agreements with Chile, Mexico, and Venezuela. + +Its recent trade agreements with Korea, China and Japan, have focused on economic and technical cooperation between those nations. Within the regional Caribbean Community and Common Market (Caricom), Colombia has also deepened economic and medical science research collaboration agreements. Colombia has also signed and ratified 105 international treaties or agreements relating to the protection of the environment. These include the Antarctic Treaty and Nuclear Test Ban Treaty and conventions on Biodiversity, Desertification, Endangered Species, Hazardous Wastes, Marine Life Conservation, Ozone Layer Protection, Ship Pollution, Tropical Timber 83, Tropical Timber 94, and Wetlands. It has signed, but not ratified, the Antarctic-Environmental Protocol and conventions on Law of the Sea and Marine Dumping. Colombia also has signed the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons and the Tlatelolco Treaty. By 1975 signatories to the 1974 Declaration of Ayacucho, of which Colombia was one, had decided on limitations to nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons. + +Gaining all 186 votes, Colombia served on the U.N. Security Council from 2011 to 2012 representing Latin American and the Caribbean. + +Colombia is also a member of the International Criminal Court with a Bilateral Immunity Agreement of protection for the United States-military (as covered under Article 98). + +Domestic politics and foreign policy +International Relations scholars long emphasized international constraints, and particularly Colombia's relationship with the United States, as central to its foreign policy. In terms of foreign policy process, presidents have broad constitutional authorities, in consultation with their foreign ministers. However, since the 2000s, the influence of other domestic actors in Colombian foreign policy-making has increased. Long, Bitar, and Jiménez-Peña examine the role of the Colombian Constitutional Court, congressional politics, social movements, and electoral challengers. They find that Colombian institutions permit increasing challenges to presidential authority, and that in important cases Colombian presidents have been forced to drop their preferred foreign policies. + +Diplomatic relations +List of countries with which Colombia maintains diplomatic relations with: + +Bilateral relations + +Africa + +Americas + +Asia + +Europe +Under the Uribe administration, Colombia's relations with the European Union (EU) have been cordial. Representatives of the EU have been critical of Colombia's antiguerrilla and antidrug strategies in several respects. The EU is particularly concerned about the potential for increased human rights abuses within Colombia at the hands of both government forces and illegal armed groups, and it has continued to distance itself from Plan Colombia. The EU is in favor of a negotiated solution to the nation's internal conflict. EU aid to Colombia has mainly consisted of social, economic and development investments. + +In 2004, the EU as an entity did not offer unrestricted support for the Uribe government's peace initiative with paramilitaries, citing concerns over the possible lack of a credible and comprehensive peace strategy and its application, but it did approve US$2 million in aid for the process. Individual EU members such Sweden, Italy, Germany and the Netherlands also provided limited support on their own. + +Oceania + +Transnational issues + +Narcotics and terrorism +By the 1990s, Colombia had become the world's leading supplier of refined cocaine and a growing source for heroin. More than 90% of the cocaine that entered in the 1990s the United States was produced, processed, or transshipped in Colombia. The cultivation of coca dropped between 1995 and 1999 from 3,020 to , primarily in areas where government control was more active. + +Despite the death of Medellín cartel drug kingpin Pablo Escobar in 1993 and the arrests of major Cali cartel leaders in 1995 and 1996, Colombian drug cartels remain among the most sophisticated criminal organizations in the world, controlling cocaine processing, international wholesale distribution chains, and markets. In 1999 Colombian police arrested over 30 narcotraffickers, most of them extraditable, in "Operation Millennium" involving extensive international cooperation. More arrests were made in a following "Operation Millennium II." + +Colombia is engaged in a broad range of narcotics control activities. Through aerial spraying of herbicide and manual eradication, Colombia has attempted to keep coca, opium poppy, and cannabis cultivation from expanding. The government has committed itself to the eradication of all illicit crops, interdiction of drug shipments, and financial controls to prevent money laundering. Alternative development programs were introduced in 1999. + +Corruption and intimidation by traffickers complicate the drug-control efforts of the institutions of government. Colombia passed revised criminal procedures code in 1993 that permits traffickers to surrender and negotiate lenient sentences in return for cooperating with prosecutors. In December 1996 and February 1997, however, the Colombian Congress passed legislation to toughen sentencing, asset forfeiture, and money-laundering penalties. + +In November 1997, the Colombian Congress amended the constitution to permit the extradition of Colombian nationals, albeit not retroactively. In late 1999, President Pastrana authorized the first extradition in almost 10 years of a Colombian trafficker to stand trial for U.S. crimes. Three such extraditions to the United States have taken place, the most recent in August 2000, with cases against others pending in Colombian courts. Under the Pastrana administration, Plan Colombia was developed and implemented with U.S. backing. + +During the presidency of Álvaro Uribe, the government applied more military pressure on the FARC and other outlawed groups. After the offensive, many security indicators improved. Colombia achieved a great decrease in cocaine production, leading White House drug czar R. Gil Kerlikowske to announce that Colombia is no longer the world's biggest producer of cocaine. + +In addition to the challenge posed to the United States by Colombian drug trafficking, illegal Colombian immigrants in the United States are an issue in Colombia-U.S. relations. According to figures from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, Colombia is the fourth-leading source country of illegal immigration to the United States. According to its estimates, the number of illegal Colombian residents in the United States almost tripled from 51,000 in 1990 to 141,000 in 2000. According to the US Census Bureau, the number of authorized Colombian immigrants in the United States in 2006 was 801,363. + +Colombia rejected threats and blackmail of the United States of America after the threat of Donald Trump to decertify the country as a partner in counter-narcotics efforts. + +See also + List of diplomatic missions in Colombia + List of diplomatic missions of Colombia + Security issues in Colombia + +References +The Czech Republic is a landlocked country in Central Europe. It is bordered by Germany to the west, Austria to the south, Slovakia to the east and Poland to the north. It consists mostly of low hills and plateaus surrounded along the borders by low mountains. Two areas of lowlands follow the Elbe river and the Morava river. About a third of the area of the Czech Republic is covered by forests. + +The Czech Republic also possesses Moldauhafen, a 30,000 m2 enclave in the middle of Hamburg docks in Germany, which was awarded to Czechoslovakia by Article 363 of the Treaty of Versailles to allow the landlocked country a place where goods transported down river could be transferred to seagoing ships. This territory reverts to Germany in 2028. + +Physical geography + +Climate + +The Czech Republic's climate is temperate, transitional between an oceanic climate and a continental climate. The summers are rather cool and dry, with average temperatures in most areas around 20 °C, the winters are fairly mild and wet with temperatures averaging around 0 °C in most areas. The relative humidity varies between 60% and 80%. + +Examples + +Geology + +Most of the area of the Czech Republic belongs to the geographically stable Bohemian Massif. Only an area of the Western Carpathians in the east of the country is younger, lifted during the Tertiary. Igneous rocks make up the base of the Bohemian Massif. Sedimentary rocks are mostly found in the north-eastern part of Bohemia with significant areas of sandstone. Among the metamorphic rocks, the most commonly found is Gneiss. + +Mountains + +The most notable mountain ranges in the Czech Republic are all found along the borders of the country. In Bohemia it is the Bohemian Forest and Ore Mountains, both bordering Germany. Then the long region of Sudetes with several mountains ranges, including Giant Mountains with Sněžka – the highest peak of the Czech Republic. The last major mountain range is the Moravian-Silesian Beskids in the east. + +Rivers + +There are four major rivers in the Czech Republic. The Elbe (locally "Labe") flows from the Giant Mountains in the north east of Bohemia to the west and then through northern Germany all the way to the North Sea. The Morava River drains most of Moravia and flows to the south into the Danube and ultimately to the Black Sea. The Oder starts in the Moravian Silesia and flows north through Poland into the Baltic Sea. The fourth major river is the Vltava, which is the longest river of the Czech Republic and drains the southern part of Bohemia before flowing into the Elbe at Mělník. + +Bodies of water + +Natural occurring bodies of water are rather scarce; most of the significant bodies of water are man-made ponds and reservoirs. The largest pond is the Rožmberk Pond, which is one of the system of fish ponds built in the 16th century around Třeboň. The largest reservoir by area covered is the Lipno Reservoir (4,870 ha), built in the 1950s and the largest reservoir by volume is Orlík Reservoir (716 million m3), built around the same time. The largest and deepest natural lake is Černé jezero (18.4 ha). + +Human geography + +Population geography + +The population of the Czech Republic is estimated to be around 10.6 million. The highest population density is in the larger metropolitan area of Ostrava and of course in the area around the capital of Prague. The lowest population density is in the Czech-German and Czech-Austrian borderlands, mostly as a lasting result of the expulsion of Germans from Czechoslovakia after the World War II. + +Political geography + +The Czech Republic is divided into thirteen regions and one capital city with regional status. The older administrative units of seventy-six districts are still recognized and remain the seats of various branches of state administration. Historically, the Czech Republic can be split into three regions: Bohemia in the west, Moravia in the east and Czech Silesia in the north east. + +Industry and agriculture +Areas affected the most by heavy industry are the Sokolov Basin and the Most Basin in the north-west of the Czech Republic. The extensive deposits of brown coal in those areas are mostly used for electricity production. It is estimated, that almost 40% of all electric power produced in the Czech Republic comes from burning brown coal mined in these areas. Plant agriculture is focused around the lowlands surrounding the Elbe and the Morava. Around 34% of the country is covered by forests and approximately 37% of land is arable. The estimated area of irrigated land is 385 km2, and freshwater withdrawal per capita is around 164 m3 every year. + +See also + Protected areas of the Czech Republic + Rivers of the Czech Republic + List of highest mountains of the Czech Republic + +References + + + +pt:República Checa#Geografia +The Czech Republic is a unitary parliamentary republic, in which the president is the head of state and the prime minister is the head of government. Executive power is exercised by the Government of the Czech Republic, which reports to the Chamber of Deputies. The legislature is exercised by the Parliament. The Czech Parliament is bicameral: the upper house of the Parliament is the Senate, and the lower house is the Chamber of Deputies. The Senate consists of 81 members who are elected for six years. The Chamber of Deputies consists of 200 members who are elected for four years. The judiciary system is topped by the trio of the Constitutional Court, Supreme Court and Supreme Administrative Court. + +The highest legal document is the Constitution of the Czech Republic, complemented by constitutional laws and the Charter of Fundamental Rights and Freedoms. The current constitution went in effect on 1 January 1993, after the dissolution of Czechoslovakia. + +The Czech Republic has a multi-party system. Between 1993 and 2013, the two largest political parties were the centre-left Czech Social Democratic Party (ČSSD) and centre-right Civic Democratic Party (ODS). This changed in early 2014, with the rise of a new major political party ANO 2011, which has since led two cabinets. + +Executive branch +The president is the head of state, and the prime minister is the head of government. The majority of executive power is given to the Cabinet, which consists of the prime minister, deputy prime ministers and ministers (usually heads of the ministries). + +|President +|Petr Pavel +|Independent +|9 March 2023 +|- +|Prime Minister +|Petr Fiala +|Civic Democratic Party +|28 November 2021 +|} + +President + +The president of the Czech Republic is elected by a direct vote for five years. They can only serve for two terms. The president is a formal head of state with limited executive powers specified in the articles 54 to 66 of the Constitution: + + to appoint or dismiss the prime minister and other members of the Cabinet + to appoint or dismiss the entire Cabinet + to confirm or decline a resignation of the prime minister and other members of the Cabinet + to summon a session of the Chamber of Deputies + to dissolve the Chamber of Deputies when specific conditions described in the Constitution are met + to pardon and mitigate penalties imposed by the court, order not to initiate criminal proceedings, suspend them if they are already initiated and to wipe previous criminal records + to declare the date of elections to the Chamber of Deputies and the Senate + to bestow state honors + to appoint and promote generals + to appoint judges + to appoint the president and vice-president of the Supreme Audit Office + to appoint members of the Board of the Czech National Bank + to appoint or dismiss heads of diplomatic missions + +The president is also the commander in chief of the Armed Forces and ratifies all domestic laws and international agreements. + +Cabinet + +The Cabinet is the supreme executive body in the Czech Republic. It makes its decisions as a body. It is held responsible by the Chamber of Deputies. The president appoints every new prime minister, who then chooses the ministers. All ministers of the Cabinet need to be approved by the president and within thirty days after the presidential approval they must ask the Chamber of Deputies for a vote of confidence. + +Prime Minister + +The prime minister is the head of government. The prime minister organizes the work of the Cabinet, presides over it and acts in its name. The prime minister sets the agenda for most foreign and domestic policies but has to obtain the president's approval to hire or dismiss any other member of the Cabinet. + +Ministers +Ministers are any member of the Cabinet who are not the prime minister. They are usually the head of a ministry, but this is not required. A ministry – sometimes called government department – is a governmental organisation that manages a specific sector of public administration. The number of ministries varies depending on the particular Cabinet and is managed by the Competence Law. As of 2021, the Czech Republic had 13 ministers and 14 ministries. + +Legislative branch + +The Parliament (Parlament in Czech) consists of two houses. The lower house is the Chamber of Deputies, and the upper house is the Senate. + +|President of the Chamber of Deputies +|Markéta Pekarová Adamová +|TOP 09 +|10 November 2021 +|- +|President of the Senate +|Miloš Vystrčil +|Civic Democratic Party +|19 February 2020 +|} + +Chamber of Deputies + +The Chamber of Deputies ( in Czech) has 200 members, elected for four-year terms by proportional representation with a 5% election threshold. The Chamber of Deputies elections happen every four years, unless the reigning Cabinet prematurely loses the Chamber of Deputies' support. Candidates for every political party participating in the elections are split among 14 electoral districts, which are identical to the country's administrative regions. A citizen must be at least 21 years old to be eligible for candidacy. + +The Chamber of Deputies was formerly known as the Czech National Council. It has the same powers and responsibilities as the now-defunct Federal Assembly of the Czechoslovakia. + +Senate + +The Senate (Senát in Czech) has 81 members, each elected for a six-year term. Senate elections happen every two years and only a third of the seats is contested each time. All of the 81 Senate electoral districts are designed to contain roughly the same number of voters. The Senate elections use a two-round system, when the two most successful candidates from the first round face each other again in the second round usually a week later. Only citizens who have reached the age of 40 are eligible for candidacy. The senate's function is to be a stabilizing force and its influence is significantly lower than that of the Chamber of Deputies. + +Judicial branch + +The Czech court system recognizes four categories of courts and the Constitutional Court, which stands outside of the court system. + +Constitutional Court + +The Constitutional Court's main purpose is to protect people's constitutional rights and freedoms. The decisions of the court are final, cannot be overturned and are considered a source of law. The court is composed of 15 justices who are named for a renewable period of 10 years by the president and approved by the Senate. Its functionality is similar to that of the Supreme Court of the United States. + +Supreme courts + +There are two supreme courts in the court system of the Czech Republic – the Supreme Court and the Supreme Administrative Court. Both reside in Brno. + +Supreme Court + +The Supreme Court of the Czech Republic is the court of highest appeal for almost all legal cases heard in the Czech Republic. The justices of the Supreme Court analyze and evaluate legally effective decisions of lower courts. They unify the Czech judicature. + +Supreme Administrative Court + +The Supreme Administrative Court of the Czech Republic protects people from unlawful decisions and procedures of the state authorities. It examines objections to elections and has the authority to ban or suspend the activity of political parties. It resolves competence disputes between governmental organizations and also serves as disciplinary court for other members of the judiciary. + +High courts + +There are two high courts in the Czech Republic – one in Prague and one in Olomouc . They serve as courts of appeal to Regional Courts in cases, where the Regional Court acted as a court of first instance. Presidents of the high courts are appointed by the president for seven years. The vice-presidents are appointed by the minister of justice and also serve a seven-year term. A justice is required by the law to have at least eight years of experience before becoming a member of a High Court. + +Regional courts + +Regional courts serve mainly as the courts of appeal to district courts. However, they can also act as courts of first instance in cases of more severe criminal charges, disputes between corporations or disputes over intellectual property. There are eight regional courts in the Czech Republic: in Brno, Ostrava, Hradec Králové, Ústí nad Labem, Plzeň, České Budějovice and two in Prague. + +District courts + +District courts serve as the courts of first instance in almost all civil or criminal proceedings. There is a total of 86 district courts in the Czech Republic. Notaries and executors are appointed by the minister of justice to their jurisdictions. + +Regional government + +The Czech Republic is divided in 14 administrative regions, including one for the capital of Prague. The older system of 73 administrative districts (okresy in Czech) and 4 municipalities was abandoned in 1999 in an administrative reform. Each of the regions has a regional council with a varied number of regional councilors and a president of the regional cabinet (hejtman in Czech) as its formal head. The capital of Prague is the only exception to this, as the City Council acts both as regional and municipal governing body and is led by a mayor. Regional councilors are elected for four-year terms similarly to deputies in the Chamber of Deputies. All adults eligible to vote are also eligible to be a candidate to a regional council. + +Composition of the Senate + +For the current composition of the Chamber of Deputies of the Czech Republic, see List of MPs elected in the 2017 Czech legislative election. + +Recent political developments + +From 1991, the Czech Republic, originally as part of Czechoslovakia and since 1993 in its own right, has been a member of the Visegrád Group and from 1995, the OECD. The Czech Republic joined NATO on 12 March 1999 and the European Union on 1 May 2004. On 21 December 2007 the Czech Republic joined the Schengen Area. + +Until 2017, either the Czech Social Democratic Party or the Civic Democratic Party led the governments of the Czech Republic. In October 2017, populist movement ANO 2011, led by the country's second-richest man, Andrej Babiš, won the elections with three times more votes than its closest rival, the centre-right Civic Democrats. In December 2017, Czech President Miloš Zeman appointed Andrej Babiš as the new prime minister. + +On 28 November 2021, Czech President Miloš Zeman appointed opposition leader Petr Fiala as the country's new prime minister. The centre-right coalition Spolu (meaning Together) won tightly contested legislative elections in October 2021 against Prime Minister Andrej Babiš and his populist ANO party. Babiš had sought re-election after four years in power. In January 2023, Former NATO general Petr Pavel won the election runoff over Andrej Babis to succeed Miloš Zeman as the fourth president of the Czech Republic. + +See also +Government of the Czech Republic +Ministry of Finance (Czech Republic) + +References + +External links + Constitution of the Czech Republic + Website with results of all elections in Czech and English + RZB Group: Czech Republic – Election 2006 Special + Czech 2006 Election blog by the Prague Daily Monitor + Erik Herron's Guide to Politics of East Central Europe and Eurasia +Government + Official governmental website English + Official presidential website English + Official Senate website English + Portal of the Public Administration Czech + Chief of State and Cabinet Members CIA library on World leaders +The economy of the Czech Republic is a developed export-oriented social market economy based in services, manufacturing, and innovation that maintains a high-income welfare state and the European social model. The Czech Republic participates in the European Single Market as a member of the European Union, and is therefore a part of the economy of the European Union. It uses its own currency, the Czech koruna, instead of the euro. It is a member of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). The Czech Republic ranks 16th in inequality-adjusted human development and 24th in World Bank Human Capital Index, ahead of countries such as the United States, the United Kingdom or France. It was described by The Guardian as "one of Europe's most flourishing economies". + +The industry sector accounts for 37% of the economy, while services account for 61% and agriculture for 2%. The principal industries are high tech engineering, electronics and machine-building, steel production, transportation equipment (automotive, rail and aerospace industry), chemicals, advanced materials and pharmaceuticals. The major services are research and development, ICT and software development, nanotechnology and life sciences. Its main agricultural products are cereals, vegetable oils and hops. + + the Czech GDP per capita at purchasing power parity is $50,961 and 698,706 Czech crowns ($31,368) at nominal value. the unemployment rate in the Czech Republic was the lowest in the EU at 2.6%, and the poverty rate is the second lowest of OECD members, following Denmark. The Czech Republic ranks 21st in the Index of Economic Freedom (ranked behind Chile), 30th in the Global Innovation Index (ranked behind UAE), 32nd in the Global Competitiveness Report, 41st in the ease of doing business index and 25th in the Global Enabling Trade Report (ranked behind Canada). The largest trading partner for both export and import is Germany, followed by other members of the EU. The Czech Republic has a highly diverse economy that ranks 7th in the 2019 Economic Complexity Index. + +History + +Pre–1989 + +The Czech lands were among the first industrialized countries in continental Europe during the German Confederation era. The Czech industrial tradition dates back to the 19th century, when the Lands of the Bohemian Crown were the economic and industrial heartland of the Austrian Empire and later the Austrian side of Austria-Hungary. The Czech lands produced a majority (about 70%) of all industrial goods in the Empire, some of which were almost monopolistic. The Czechoslovak crown was introduced in April 1919. Introduced at a 1:1 ratio to the Austro-Hungarian currency, it became one of the most stable currencies in Europe. The First Republic became one of the 10 most developed countries of the world (behind the U.S., Canada, Australia, Switzerland, Argentina, Britain, France, Sweden and Belgium). + +The consequences of the 1938 Munich Agreement and subsequent occupation were disastrous for the economy. After the occupation and forced subordination of the economy to German economic interests, the crown was officially pegged to the mark at a ratio of 1:10, even though the unofficial exchange rate was 1 to 6-7 and Germans immediately started buying Czech goods in large quantities. + +In accordance with Stalin's development policy of planned interdependence, all the economies of the socialist countries were tightly linked to that of the Soviet Union. Czechoslovakia was the most prosperous country in the Eastern Bloc, however it continued to lag further behind the rest of the developed world. With the disintegration of the communist economic alliance in 1991, Czech manufacturers lost their traditional markets among former communist countries in the east. + +Today, this heritage is both an asset and a liability. The Czech Republic has a well-educated population and a densely developed infrastructure. + +1989–1995 +The "Velvet Revolution" in 1989, offered a chance for profound and sustained political and economic reform. Signs of economic resurgence began to appear in the wake of the shock therapy that the International Monetary Fund (IMF) labelled the "big bang" of January 1991. Since then, consistent liberalization and astute economic management has led to the removal of 95% of all price controls, low unemployment, a positive balance of payments position, a stable exchange rate, a shift of exports from former communist economic bloc markets to Western Europe, and relatively low foreign debt. Inflation has been higher than in some other countries – mostly in the 10% range – and the government has run consistent modest budget deficits. + +Two government priorities have been strict fiscal policies and creating a good climate for incoming investment in the republic. Following a series of currency devaluations, the crown has remained stable in relation to the US dollar. The Czech crown became fully convertible for most business purposes in late 1995. + +In order to stimulate the economy and attract foreign partners, the government has revamped the legal and administrative structure governing investment. With the breakup of the Soviet Union, the country, till that point highly dependent on exports to the USSR, had to make a radical shift in economic outlook: away from the East, and towards the West. This necessitated the restructuring of existing banking and telecommunications facilities, as well as adjusting commercial laws and practices to fit Western standards. Further minimizing reliance on a single major partner, successive Czech governments have welcomed U.S. investment (amongst others) as a counterbalance to the strong economic influence of Western European partners, especially of their powerful neighbour, Germany. Although foreign direct investment (FDI) runs in uneven cycles, with a 12.9% share of total FDI between 1990 and March 1998, the U.S. was the third-largest foreign investor in the Czech economy, behind Germany and the Netherlands. + +Progress toward creating a stable investment climate was recognized when the Czech Republic became the first post-communist country to receive an investment-grade credit rating by international credit institutions. + +The country boasts a flourishing consumer production sector and has privatized most state-owned heavy industries through the voucher privatization system. Under the system, every citizen was given the opportunity to buy, for a moderate price, a book of vouchers that represents potential shares in any state-owned company. The voucher holders could then invest their vouchers, increasing the capital base of the chosen company, and creating a nation of citizen share-holders. This is in contrast to Russian privatization, which consisted of sales of communal assets to private companies rather than share-transfer to citizens. The effect of this policy has been dramatic. Under communism, state ownership of businesses was estimated to be 97%. Privatization through restitution of real estate to the former owners was largely completed in 1992. By 1998, more than 80% of enterprises were in private hands. Now completed, the program has made Czechs, who own shares of each of the Czech companies, one of the highest per-capita share owners in the world. + +1995–2000 + +The country's economic transformation was far from complete. Political and financial crises in 1997 shattered the Czech Republic's image as one of the most stable and prosperous of post-Communist states. Delays in enterprise restructuring and failure to develop a well-functioning capital market played major roles in Czech economic troubles, which culminated in a currency crisis in May. The formerly pegged currency was forced into a floating system as investors sold their Korunas faster than the government could buy them. This followed a worldwide trend to divest from developing countries that year. Investors also worried the republic's economic transformation was far from complete. Another complicating factor was the current account deficit, which reached nearly 8% of GDP. + +In response to the crisis, two austerity packages were introduced later in the spring (called vernacularly "The Packages"), which cut government spending by 2.5% of GDP. Growth dropped to 0.3% in 1997, −2.3% in 1998, and −0.5% in 1999. The government established a restructuring agency in 1999 and launched a revitalization program – to spur the sale of firms to foreign companies. Key priorities included accelerating legislative convergence with EU norms, restructuring enterprises, and privatising banks and utilities. The economy, fueled by increased export growth and investment, was expected to recover by 2000. + +2000–2005 +Growth in 2000–05 was supported by exports to the EU, primarily to Germany, and a strong recovery of foreign and domestic investment. Domestic demand is playing an ever more important role in underpinning growth as interest rates drop and the availability of credit cards and mortgages increases. Current account deficits of around 5% of GDP are beginning to decline as demand for Czech products in the European Union increases. Inflation is under control. Recent accession to the EU gives further impetus and direction to structural reform. In early 2004 the government passed increases in the Value Added Tax (VAT) and tightened eligibility for social benefits with the intention to bring the public finance gap down to 4% of GDP by 2006, but more difficult pension and healthcare reforms will have to wait until after the next elections. Privatization of the state-owned telecommunications firm Český Telecom took place in 2005. Intensified restructuring among large enterprises, improvements in the financial sector, and effective use of available EU funds should strengthen output growth. + +2005–2010 +Growth continued in the first years of the EU membership. The credit portion of the Financial crisis of 2007–2010 did not affect the Czech Republic much, mostly due to its stable banking sector which has learned its lessons during a smaller crisis in the late 1990s and became much more cautious. As a fraction of the GDP, the Czech public debt is among the smallest ones in Central and Eastern Europe. Moreover, unlike many other post-communist countries, an overwhelming majority of the household debt – over 99% – is denominated in the local Czech currency. That's why the country wasn't affected by the shrunken money supply in the U.S. dollars. + +However, as a large exporter, the economy was sensitive to the decrease of the demand in Germany and other trading partners. In the middle of 2009, the annual drop of the GDP for 2009 was estimated around 3% or 4.3%, a relatively modest decrease. The impact of the economic crisis may have been limited by the existence of the national currency that temporarily weakened in H1 of 2009, simplifying the life of the exporters. + +2010–2015 + +From the financial crisis of 2007–2010, Czech Republic is in stagnation or decreasing of GDP. Some commenters and economists criticising fiscally conservative policy of Petr Nečas' right-wing government, especially criticising ex-minister of finance, Miroslav Kalousek. Miroslav Kalousek in a 2008 interview, as minister of finance in the center-right government of Mirek Topolánek, said "Czech Republic will not suffer by financial crisis". In September 2008, Miroslav Kalousek formed state budget with projection of 5% GDP increase in 2009. In 2009 and 2010, Czech Republic suffered strong economical crisis and GDP decreased by 4,5%. From 2009 to 2012, Czech Republic suffered highest state budget deficits in history of independent Czech Republic. From 2008 to 2012, the public debt of Czech Republic increased by 18,9%. Most decrease of industrial output was in construction industry (-25% in 2009, -15,5% in 2013). From 4Q 2009 to 1Q 2013, GDP decreased by 7,8%. + +In 2012, Czech government increased VAT. Basic VAT was increased from 20% in 2012 to 21% in 2013 and reduced VAT increased from 14% to 15% in 2013. Small enterprises sales decreased by 21% from 2012 to 2013 as result of increasing VAT. Patria.cz predicting sales stagnation and mild increase in 2013. +Another problem is foreign trade. The Czech Republic is considered an export economy (the Czech Republic has strong machinery and automobile industries), however in 2013, foreign trade rapidly decreased which led to many other problems and increase of state budget deficit. In 2013, Czech National Bank, central bank, implemented controversial monetary step. To increase export and employment, CNB wilfully deflated Czech Crown (CZK), which inflation increased from 0.2% in November 2013, to 1.3% in 1Q 2014. + +In 2014, GDP in the Czech Republic increased by 2% and is predicted to increase by 2.7% in 2015. In 2015, Czech Republic's economy grew by 4,2% and it's the fastest growing economy in the European Union. On 29 May 2015, it was announced that growth of the Czech economy has increased from calculated 3,9% to 4,2%. + +2015–present + +In August 2015, Czech GDP growth was 4.4%, making the Czech economy the highest growing in Europe. On 9 November 2015, unemployment in the Czech Republic was at 5.9%, the lowest number since February 2009. Dividends worth CZK 289 billion were paid to the foreign owners of Czech companies in 2016. + +European Union + +Since its accession to the European Union in 2004, the Czech Republic has adopted the Economic and Monetary Union of the European Union and it is bound by the Treaty of Accession 2003 to adopt the Euro currency in the future. + +The Czech Republic also receives €24.2bn between 2014 and 2020 from the European Structural and Investment Funds, however, this sum does not outweigh the amount of capital outflow of profits of foreign owned firms from the Czech Republic into other EU members, at which the funds are aimed to compensate for. + +Public policy + +As of 2016, the Czech Republic has the second lowest poverty rate of OECD members only behind Denmark. The Czech healthcare system ranks 13th in the 2016 Euro health consumer index. + +Energy + +Statistical indicators + +Development of main indicators +The following table shows the main economic indicators in 1980–2017. Inflation under 2% is in green. + +Background +From the CIA World Factbook 2017 +GDP (pp.): $353.9 billion (2016) +GDP (nom.): $195.3 billion (2016) +GDP Growth: 2.6% (2016) +GDP per capita (pp.): $33,500 (2016) +GDP per capita (nom.): $18,487 (2016) +GDP by sector: +Agriculture: 2.5% +Industry: 37.5% +Services: 60% (2016) +Inflation: 0.7% (2016) +Labour Force: 5.427 million (2017) +Unemployment: 2,3% (September 2018) + +Industrial production growth rate: 3.5% (2016) + +Household income or consumption by percentage share: (2015) +lowest 10%: 4.1% +highest 10%: 21.7% + +Public Debt: 34.2% GDP (2018) + +Trade and finance + +Exports: $136.1 billion +Export goods: machinery and transport equipment, raw materials, fuel, chemicals (2018) + +Imports: $122.8 billion +Import goods: machinery and transport equipment, raw materials and fuels, chemicals (2018) +Current Account balance: $2.216 billion (2018) +Export partners: Germany 32.4%, Slovakia 8.4%, Poland 5.8%, UK 5.2%, France 5.2%, Italy 4.3%, Austria 4.2% (2016) +Import partners: Germany 30.6%, Poland 9.6%, China 7.5%, Slovakia 6.3%, Netherlands 5.3%, Italy 4.1% (2016) +Reserves: $85.73 billion (31 December 2016) +Foreign Direct Investment: $139.6 billion (31 December 2016) +Czech Investment Abroad: $43.09 billion (31 December 2016) +External debt: $138 billion (31 December 2016) +Value of Publicly Traded Shares: $44.5 billion (31 December 2016) + +Exchange rates: + koruny (Kč) per US$1 – 21.82 Kč (September 2018), 18.75 (December 2010), 18.277 (2007), 23.957 (2005), 25.7 (2004), 28.2 (2003), 32.7 (2002), 38.0 (2001), 38.6 (2001), 34.6 (1999), 32.3 (1998), 31.7 (1997), 27.1 (1996), 26.5 (1995) + koruny (Kč) per EUR€1 – 27.33 (May 2015), 25.06 (December 2010) + +IT and Telecommunications +Households with access to fixed and mobile telephone access + landline telephone – 25% (2009) + according to the Czech Statistical Office: 55,2% (2005); 31,1% (2008); 27,6% (2009); 24,2% (2010); 23,4% (2011); 21,8% (2012) + mobile telephone – 94% (2009) + according to the Czech Statistical Office: 81,2% (2005); 92,4% (2008); 94,6% (2009); 95,6% (2010); 96,2% (2011); 97,0% (2012) + +Individuals with mobile telephone access + according to the Czech Statistical Office: 75,8% (2005); 90,6% (2009); 93,9% (2011); 96,0% (2012); 96,0% (2013) + +Broadband penetration rate + fixed broadband – 19.1% (2010) + mobile broadband – 3.5% (2010) + +Individuals using computer and internet + computer – 67% (2009) +according to the Czech Statistical Office: 42,0% (2005); 59,2% (2009); 64,1% (2010); 67,1% (2011); 69,5% (2012); 70,2% (2013) + internet – 80.9% (2019) +according to the Czech Statistical Office: 32,1% (2005); 55,9% (2009); 61,8% (2010); 65,5% (2011); 69,5% (2012); 70,4% (2013) + +Companies +In 2022, the sector with the highest number of companies registered in Czech Republic is Services with 295,538 companies followed by Finance, Insurance, and Real Estate and Wholesale Trade with 189,308 and 95,142 companies respectively. + +International rankings + +Society and quality of life + + 27th in Human Development Index (2019) + 13th in inequality-adjusted Human Development Index (2019) + 7th in Henley Passport Index (2019) + 24th in Human Capital Index (2018) + 16th in Quality of Nationality Index (Henley & Partners, 2018) + 27th in Legatum Prosperity Index (2019) + 22nd in Social Progress Index (2019) + +Macroeconomics + 41st in Ease of doing business index (2019) + 7th in Economic Complexity Index (2018) + 26th in Global Competitiveness Report (2022) + 25th in Global Enabling Trade Report (2016) + 24th in Global Innovation Index (2019) + 21st in Index of Economic Freedom (2018) + +See also + +List of Czech regions by GDP +Czech National Bank + CzechInvest and CzechStartups.org + International rankings of the Czech Republic + Prague Stock Exchange + Tourism in the Czech Republic + Transport in the Czech Republic + +Resources + Statistická ročenka České republiky (Statistical Yearbook of the Czech Republic) by the Czech Statistical Office. The current line is published annually since 1957. Recent yearbooks can be read online (in Czech and English). + Czechoslovakia published its first statistical yearbook in 1920. Historically used names: Statistická příručka Republiky československé, Statistická ročenka Protektorátu Čechy a Morava (during the occupation) and Statistická ročenka Československé socialistické republiky. + Statistics about the Czech lands in Austria-Hungary were collected by Zemský statistický úřad Království českého (Provincial Statistical Office of the Czech Kingdom) founded in 1897. Two detailed books (in Czech and German) were published in 1909 and 1913. + Benacek, Vladimir: economics of alliances and (dis)integration, an alternative interpretation of transition illustrated on Czech economic history (June 2002) - 25 p. + Horvath, Julius: the Czech currency crisis of 1997 - En: Dabrovski, Marek: currency crises in emerging markets - New York: Springer, 2003 - p. 221-234 + OECD: economic surveys, Czech republic, 1991-2018 (OECD iLibrary) + Zidek, Libor: from central planning to the market, the transformation of the Czech economy 1989-2004 Budapest: CEU press, 2017 + +References + +External links + OECD Economic Survey of the Czech Republic + Czech economic indicators Latest indicators collected by Czech national bank + OECD's Czech Republic country Web site + + Current economic data + + Maldonado, Carlos Gustavo: República checa, transición del socialismo de Estado a la economía de mercado - En: economía de posguerra, blog de historia económica global + Economy of the Czech Republic – Annual Trends + World Bank Summary Trade Statistics Czech Republic + + +Czech Republic +Czech Republic +Czech Republic +Telephones - main lines in use: +2.888 million (2006) + +Telephones - mobile cellular: +13.075 million (2007) + +Telephone system: +domestic: +86% of exchanges now digital; existing copper subscriber systems now being improved with Asymmetric Digital Subscriber Line (ADSL) equipment to accommodate Internet and other digital signals; trunk systems include fibre-optic cable and microwave radio relay +Indian Ocean regions), 1 Intelsat, 1 Eutelsat, 1 Inmarsat, 1 Globalstar + +Radio broadcast stations: +AM 31, FM 304, shortwave 17 (2000) + +Radios: +3,159,134 (December 2000) + +Television broadcast stations: +150 (plus 1,434 repeaters) (2000) + +Televisions: +3,405,834 (December 2000) + +Internet Service Providers (ISPs): +more than 300 (2000) + +Internet users: +4.4 million (2007) + +Country code: CZ + +See also : Czech Republic +Transport in the Czech Republic relies on several main modes, including transport by road, rail, water and air. + +Railways + +The Czech Republic has a total railway length of . The vast majority () is standard gauge. Electrified railways generally have voltages of 3 kV DC or 25 kV AC. of track is narrow gauge. The most prominent Czech railway company is the state-owned České dráhy (ČD) (English: Czech Railways). Prague has an underground rapid transit system, the Prague Metro. In addition, the cities of Brno, Liberec, Most, Olomouc, Ostrava, Plzeň, and Prague have tram systems. + +Roads + +The Czech Republic has, in total, of roads. It has of motorways. In the 1980s and 1990s there was a significant increase in passenger transport on the roads in the Czech Republic, which was associated with a sharp increase in the accident rate. Between 2007 and 2013, the death rate fell in every year, with a record low of 583 deaths in 2013, compared with the 1994 high of 1,473 casualties. Despite this however, the fatality rate per head of population is moderately high, comparable to the United States. + +Highways + +There are 2 main categories of roads forming the main network: Motorways and Highways. These roads are managed by the state-owned Directorate of Highways and Motorways of the Czech Republic – ŘSD, established in 1997. Among the first modern motorways in the Czech Republic was the motorway from Prague to the Slovak border through Brno whose construction was started on May 2, 1939. + +Motorways are dual carriageways with tolls and a speed limit of 130 km/h. +Highways can be single and dual carriageway with a speed limit of 90 km/h (dual carriageways are commonly signposted as Roads for motorcars with a speed limit of 110 km/h). + +ŘSD currently manages and maintains 1,369 km of motorways (dálnice). + +Waterways +The Vltava is the country's longest river, at 430 km. 358 km of the Elbe (Labe), which totals 1154 km, is also present in the country. An artificial waterway, nowadays used for recreation, is the Baťa Canal. + +Ports and harbors +Děčín, Mělník, Prague, Ústí nad Labem, Moldauhafen in Hamburg (no longer operational, will be handed over to Germany in 2028) + +Airports + +In 2006, the Czech Republic had a total 121 airports. 46 of these airports had paved runways while 75 had unpaved runways. The largest and busiest airport in the Czech Republic is Václav Havel Airport Prague, opened in 1937. Other international airports include Brno–Tuřany Airport, Karlovy Vary Airport, Ostrava Leoš Janáček Airport, Pardubice Airport, Kunovice Airport and Public domestic and private international airport is for example Hradec Králové Airport. + +Airports with paved runways +Total: 46 (2007) + Over 3,047 m: 2 + 2,438 to 3,047 m: 10 + 1,524 to 2,437 m: 13 + 914 to 1,523 m: 2 + Under 914 m: 19 + +Airports with unpaved runways +Total: 75 (2007) + 1,524 to 2,437 m: 1 + 914 to 1,523 m: 25 + Under 914 m: 49 + +Heliports +2 (2006) + +See also +Czech Republic +List of airports in the Czech Republic +Road signs in the Czech Republic +European driving licence + +References + +External links +Czech Transport +idos.cz - public transport on-line timetables and trip planner (sponsored by the government) +Transport in the Czech Republic + + + +cs:Česko#Doprava +The Army of the Czech Republic (, AČR), also known as the Czech Army, is the military service responsible for the defence of the Czech Republic as part of the Armed Forces of the Czech Republic () alongside the Military Office of the President of the Republic and the Castle Guard. The Army consists of the General Staff, the Land Forces, the Air Force and support units. + +Czech Army's main historical legacy and inspiration stems from the 15th century Hussite militia, which is credited with numerous warfare advancements, including introduction of firearms to field battles as well as wagon fort strategy. Modern history precedes the 1918 Czechoslovak declaration of independence with formal establishment of the Czechoslovak Legion fighting on the side of the Entente powers during the WW1. Following the Munich Agreement, the country was occupied by Nazi Germany and the Army was reconstituted in exile, fighting on the side of Allies of World War II in the European as well as Mediterranean and Middle East theatre. After the 1948 Communist Coup, the Czechoslovak People's Army with over 200,000 active personnel and some 4,500 tanks formed one of the pillars of the Warsaw Pact military alliance. + +Following the Velvet Revolution and dissolution of Czechoslovakia, the Czech Republic joined NATO in 1999. The conscription was abolished in 2004, leading to transformation into a modern professional army inspired mostly by the British Armed Forces and USMC example. Today, the Czech Army has 27.000 professional personnel and 4.000 members of active reserves. Additionally, any citizen can voluntarily join a five week basic training without becoming a soldier or join advanced shooting training with their privately owned firearms and become civilian reservist. + +A law adopted in June 2023 stipulates that the military expenditures shall not be lower than 2% of country's GDP, starting from 2024. + +History + +Czech lands + +The military history of the Czech people dates back to the Middle Ages and the creation of the Duchy of Bohemia and the Kingdom of Bohemia. During the Hussite Wars, Jan Žižka became a military leader of such skill and eminence that the Hussite legacy became an important and lasting part of the Czech military traditions. + +Official military names since 1918: + +1918–1950 - Czechoslovak Armed Forces (this official name was given to the Czechoslovak Army on March 19, 1920 on the basis of the Armed Forces Act) + +1950–1954 - Czechoslovak Army + +1954–1989 - Czechoslovak People's Army + +1990–1992 - Czechoslovak Army + +since 1993 - Army of the Czech Republic (ACR) + +Czechoslovakia + +The Czechoslovak Armed Forces were originally formed on 30 June 1918 when 6,000 members of the Czechoslovak Legion in France, which had been established in 1914, took oath and received a battle banner in Darney, France, thus preceding the official declaration of Czechoslovak independence by four months. There were also 50 000 legion soldiers in Russia at that time. The military achievements of the Czechoslovak legions on the French, Italian and especially Russian front became one of the main arguments that the Czechoslovak pro-independence leaders, especially for T. G. Masaryk in America, could use to gain the support for the country's independence by the Allies of World War I. + +In 1938, servicemen of the Czechoslovak Army and the State Defense Guard fought in an undeclared border war against the German-backed Sudetendeutsches Freikorps as well as Polish and Hungarian paramilitary forces. As a result of the Munich Agreement, areas heavily populated by ethnic German speaking people were incorporated into the Third Reich and military-aged men living there were subject to being drafted into the Wehrmacht. In 1939, after the Slovak State proclaimed its independence and the remainder of Carpathian Ruthenia was occupied and annexed by Hungary, the German occupation of the Czech Lands followed and the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia was proclaimed after the negotiations with Emil Hácha. The Protectorate's government possessed its own armed force, the Government Army (6,500 men), tasked with public security and rearguard duties. On the other side of the conflict, a number of Czechoslovak units and formations served with the Polish Army (Czechoslovak Legion), the French Army, the Royal Air Force, the British Army (the 1st Czechoslovak Armoured Brigade), and the Red Army (I Corps). Four Czech and Slovak-manned RAF squadrons were transferred to Czechoslovak control in late 1945. + +From 1954 until 1989, the Army was known as the Czechoslovak People's Army (ČSLA). Although the ČSLA, as formed in 1945, included both Soviet- and British-equipped/trained expatriate troops, the "Western" soldiers had been purged from the ČSLA after 1948 when the communists took power. The ČSLA offered no resistance to the invasion mounted by the Soviets in 1968 in reaction to the "Prague Spring", and was extensively reorganized by the Soviets following the re-imposition of communist rule in Prague. + +Of the approximately 201,000 personnel on active duty in the ČSLA in 1987, about 145,000, or about 72 percent, served in the ground forces (commonly referred to as the army). About 100,000 of these were conscripts. There were two military districts, Western and Eastern. A 1989 listing of forces shows two Czechoslovak armies in the west, the 1st Army at Příbram with one tank division and three motor rifle divisions, the 4th Army at Písek with two tank divisions and two motor rifle divisions. In the Eastern Military District, there were two tank divisions, the 13th and 14th, with a supervisory headquarters at Trenčín in the Slovak part of the country. + +During the Cold War, the ČSLA was equipped primarily with Soviet arms, although certain arms like the OT-64 SKOT armored personnel carrier, the L-29 Delfín and L-39 Albatros aircraft, the P-27 Pancéřovka antitank rocket launcher, the vz. 58 assault rifle or the Uk vz. 59 machine gun were of Czechoslovak design. + +After the fall of communism during the Velvet Revolution in 1989, the Czechoslovak People's Army was renamed back to the Czechoslovak Army and was completely transformed as well. + +After 1992 (dissolution of Czechoslovakia) + +The Army of the Czech Republic was formed after the Czechoslovak Armed Forces split after the 31 December 1992 peaceful dissolution of Czechoslovakia. Czech forces stood at 90,000 in 1993. They were reduced to around 65,000 in 11 combat brigades and the Air Force in 1997, to 63,601 in 1999, and to 35,000 in 2005. At the same time, the forces were modernized and reoriented towards a defensive posture. In 2004, the army transformed itself into a fully professional organization and compulsory military service was abolished. The Army maintains an active reserve. + +The Czech Republic is a member of the United Nations and the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe. In March 1999, the Czech Republic joined NATO. Since 1990, the ACR and the Czech Armed Forces have contributed to numerous peacekeeping and humanitarian operations, including IFOR, SFOR, and EUFOR Althea in Bosnia, Desert Shield/Desert Storm, Afghanistan, Kosovo, Albania, Turkey, Pakistan and with the Coalition forces in Iraq. + +Current deployments (2019): + +Lithuania: NATO Operation (NATO Enhanced Forward Presence) - 230 soldiers +Latvia: NATO Operation (NATO Enhanced Forward Presence) - 60 soldiers +Afghanistan: NATO Operation (Resolute Support Mission) - 390 soldiers +Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania: NATO Operation (Baltic Air Policing) - 95 soldiers, 5x Jas 39 Gripen +Kosovo: NATO Operation (KFOR) - 9 soldiers +Mali: EU military training mission (EUTM Mali) - 120 soldiers +Mali: UN peacekeeping mission (MINUSMA) - 5 soldiers +Somalia: EU Operation Atalanta (NAVFOR) - 3 soldiers +Sinai: International peacekeeping force (MFO) - 18 soldiers +Iraq: Military intervention against the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (OIR) - 31 soldiers (air advisory team), 12 soldiers (chemical unit) +Mediterranean Sea: EU military operation (EU Navfor Med) - 5 soldiers +Bosnia and Herzegovina: Military deployment to oversee the military implementation of the Dayton Agreement (European Union Force Althea) - 2 soldiers +Golan Heights: UN peacekeeping mission (UNDOF) - 3 soldiers +DR Congo: UN peacekeeping mission (MONUC) - 2 military observers +Mali: UN peacekeeping mission (MINUSMA) - 2 military observers +Kosovo: UN peacekeeping mission (UNMIK) - 2 military observers +Central African Republic: UN peacekeeping mission (MINUSCA) - 3 military observers + +Structure +Many of the duties of the President of the Czech Republic can be said to be ceremonial to one degree or another, especially since the President has relatively few powers independent of the will of the Prime Minister. One of those is the status as commander in chief of the military; no part of these duties can take place but through the assent of the Prime Minister. In matters of war, he is in every sense merely a figurehead, since the Constitution gives all substantive constitutional authority over the use of the armed forces to the Parliament. In fact, the only specific thing the constitution allows the President to do with respect to the military is to appoint its generalsbut even this must be done with the signature of the Prime Minister. + +Structure of the Czech Armed Forces consists of two main parts and other commands: + + General Staff of Czech Armed Forces (Praha) + Czech Land Forces (Praha) + Czech Air Force (Praha) +Special Forces Command(Praha) +Cyber Forces Command (Brno) +Territorial Command (Tábor) +Training Command - Military Academy (Vyškov) + +Active reserves +Active Reserve (in Czech Aktivní záloha) is a part of the otherwise professional Army of the Czech Republic. This service was created to allow the participation of citizens with a positive attitude to the military. + +A volunteer needs either to have completed the compulsory military service (which ended in 2004) or to attend 6 week training. Then the reservists have to serve up to three weeks a year and can be called up to serve two weeks during a non-military crisis. They are not intended to serve abroad, but individuals may volunteer to do so. The Reserve presents itself on events like BAHNA, a military show. + +Each of the active duty brigades or regiments have their own active reserve subordinate units that train with the same equipment as the professional soldiers and is part of the organisational structure usually as a 4th company in a battalion. +The Territorial Command is responsible for the active reserves and have direct control of the 14 infantry companies that belong to regional military commands in each of the 13 regions and capital city Prague. + +Equipment + +The Army of the Czech Republic, to a large extent, currently uses equipment dating back to the times of the Warsaw Pact. During the Cold War, Czechoslovakia was a major supplier of tanks, armoured personnel carriers, military trucks and trainer aircraft – the bulk of military exports went to its Comecon partners. Replacement of aging or obsolete equipment, or making it at least compliant with NATO standards, is urgently required. Modernization plans include acquisition of new multi-role helicopters, transport aircraft, infantry fighting vehicles, air defence radars and missiles. If possible, the Czech Ministry of Defence selects products that are manufactured or co-produced in the Czech Republic. This includes firearms of the Česká zbrojovka Uherský Brod, namely the CZ 75 pistol, CZ Scorpion Evo 3 submachine gun, and CZ 805 BREN and BREN 2 assault rifles. Moreover, the Czech Army is equipped with about 3,000 T810 and T815 vehicles of various modifications produced by the Czech Tatra Trucks company. Tatra Defence Vehicle factory ensures licensed production of Pandur II and Titus armoured vehicles. Aircraft such as the Aero L-39 Albatros, Aero L-159 Alca and Let L-410 Turbolet have been produced domestically as well. + +At the beginning of 2019, the Czech Ministry of Defence announced its modernization program, consisting of acquiring 210 new modern IFVs as a replacement for the aging BVP-2. MoD approached four manufacturers: BAE Systems (CV90), GDELS (ASCOD), Rheinmetall (Lynx) and PSM (Puma). The cost of the program is expected to exceed 50 billion CZK. + +In May 2022 the Czech Ministry of Defence announced it will get 15 Leopards 2A4 from Germany as an exchange for Czech tanks that will be given to Ukraine to help defend against Russian invasion and will purchase up to 50 modern 2A7+ variants later. + +Uniforms +Different types of Czech Army uniforms: + +Commanding officers +Chief of the General Staff: Lieutenant General Karel Řehka +First Deputy Chief of the General Staff: Major General Ivo Střecha +Deputy Chief of the General Staff of the AČR-Chief of Staff: Lieutenant General Miroslav Hlaváč +Deputy Chief of the General Staff - Inspector of the AČR: Major General Milan Schulc + +Current and historic military ranks + +See also +Czechoslovakian naval forces +Government Army + +Citations + +References + +Further reading + Stephane Lefebvre, 'The Army of the Czech Republic: A Status Report,' Journal of Slavic Military Studies, Vol. 8, No. 4, December 1995, pp. 718–751 + Tomáš Weiss, 'Fighting Wars or Controlling Crowds? The Case of the Czech Military Forces and the Possible Blurring of Police and Military Functions, Armed Forces & Society, Vol. 39, No. 3, pp. 450-466 + +External links + + Ministry of Defence of the Czech Republic + Information Center about NATO +Training Command – Military Academy + +Military of the Czech Republic +Permanent Structured Cooperation +The Czech Republic is a Central European country, a member of the European Union, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE), the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), the United Nations (and all of its main specialized agencies and boards). It entertains diplomatic relations with 191 countries of the world, around half of which maintain a resident embassy in the Czech capital city, Prague. + +During the years 1948–1989, the foreign policy of Czechoslovakia had followed that of the Soviet Union. Since the revolution and the subsequent mutually-agreed peaceful dissolution of Czechoslovakia into the Czech Republic and Slovakia, the Czechs have made reintegration with Western institutions their chief foreign policy objective. This goal was rapidly met with great success, as the nation joined NATO in 1999 and the European Union in 2004, and held the Presidency of the European Union during the first half of 2009. + +International disputes + +Liechtenstein +Throughout the past decades, Liechtenstein continuously claimed restitution for , or an area roughly ten times the size of Liechtenstein, of land currently located in the Czech Republic. The land was partially confiscated from the Liechtenstein family in 1918 with the rest of the property being confiscated in 1945 after the expulsion of Germans and confiscation of German property. The Czech Republic insisted that it could not acknowledge or be responsible for claims going back to before February 1948, when the Communists had seized power. + +As a result, Liechtenstein did not diplomatically recognize the existence of the Czech Republic as a new state (and, for that matter, also that of the Slovak Republic) until 2009. + +In July 2009, the Prince of Liechtenstein announced he was resigning to the previous unsuccessful claims to property located in the Czech Republic, and on 13 July 2009, after politically recognizing one another, the Czech Republic and Liechtenstein formally established diplomatic relations. + +Placement of US National Missile Defense base +In February 2007, the US started formal negotiations with Czech Republic and Poland concerning construction of missile shield installations in those countries for a Ground-based Midcourse Defense System. Government of the Czech Republic agrees (while 67% Czechs disagree and only about 22% support it) to host a missile defense radar on its territory while a base of missile interceptors is supposed to be built in Poland. The objective is reportedly to protect another parts of US National Missile Defense from long-range missile strikes from Iran and North Korea, but Czech PM Mirek Topolánek said the main reason is to avoid Russian influence and strengthen ties to US. + +The main government supporter Alexandr Vondra, Deputy Prime Minister for European affairs, used to be an ambassador to the USA. More problematic is that between 2004 and 2006 he was an executive director of a lobbying company Dutko Worldwide Prague. Dutko's and its strategic partner AMI Communications (PR company) customers are Boeing, Lockheed Martin, Nortrop Grumman, which are largest contractors for NMD development. AMI Communications also received (without a formal selection procedure) a government contract to persuade Czechs to support US radar base. + +Diplomatic relations +List of countries with which the Czech Republic maintains diplomatic relations with: + +Bilateral relations + +Africa + +Americas + +Asia + +Europe + +Multilateral relations +Foreign relations of the European Union +Foreign relations of NATO + +See also + +List of diplomatic missions in the Czech Republic +Visa policy of the Schengen Area +Visa requirements for Czech citizens +Visa (document)#Visa restrictions + +References + +External links + Concept of foreign policy of the Czech Republic + + +Government of the Czech Republic +Climbing is the activity of using one's hands, feet, or other parts of the body to ascend a steep topographical object that can range from the world's tallest mountains (e.g. the eight thousanders) to small boulders. Climbing is done for locomotion, sporting recreation, for competition, and is also done in trades that rely on ascension, such as rescue and military operations. Climbing is done indoors and outdoors, on natural surfaces (e.g. rock climbing and ice climbing), and on artificial surfaces (e.g. climbing walls) + +The sport of climbing has evolved by ascending different types of climbing routes at ever-increasing grades of difficulty. Professional mountain guides or rock climbing guides (e.g. the UIAGM), were an important element in developing the popularity of the sport in the natural environment, and remain so today. Since the 1980s, the development of competition climbing and the availability of artificial climbing walls have dramatically increased the popularity of rock climbing as a sport, and led to the emergence of professional rock climbers, such as Wolfgang Güllich, Chris Sharma, Adam Ondra, Lynn Hill, Catherine Destivelle, and Janja Garnbret. + +Climbing became an Olympic sport for the first time in the 2021 Olympic Games in Tokyo (see Sport climbing at the 2020 Summer Olympics) in that format that included competition lead climbing, competition bouldering, and competition speed climbing disciplines. Competition ice climbing is not yet an Olympic sport. + +Rock-based + +Rock climbing can trace its origins to the late 19th-century, and has since developed into a number of main sub-disciplines (single-pitch, multi-pitch/big wall, bouldering, and competition), which in themselves can be conducted in varying manners (aid, sport, traditional and free solo): + + Single pitch climbing means ascending climbs that are a single rope-length (up to 50-metres) while big wall climbing (and multi-pitch climbing) means ascending routes that are many rope-lengths (can be up to 1,000-metres). These two rock climbing sub-disciplines can be conducted in one of a number of ways: + Aid climbing is a form of rock climbing that uses artificial aids such as aiders, pitons, and other mechanical devices to assist in ascending a route. Much of rock climbing began as aid climbing, and even up until the 1970s, many big wall routes required aid climbing techniques. + Sport climbing is a form of rock climbing that uses no artificial aids (which is known as free climbing), but does rely on permanent fixed bolts (or other mechanical anchors), for use as protection while climbing (but not as aid); was started in the 1980s in France. + Traditional climbing is a form of rock climbing that uses no artificial aids (and is thus free climbing) but unlike sport climbing, the climbers place removable protection such as camming devices and nuts while ascending the route, which is then removed by the second climber. + Free soloing is a form of rock climbing that uses no artificial aids (and is thus free climbing) and where the climber uses no protection (neither sport nor traditional); thus any fall while free soloing could be fatal; deep-water soloing is a form of free soloing where a fall will result in landing into safe water. + Top rope climbing is a form of rock climbing that uses no artificial aids but as the sole form of protection, uses a pre-fixed rope secured to the top of the route (i.e. is used on single-pitches), and thus should the climber fall, they simply hang off the rope with no risk of any injury; it is not regarded as free climbing. + Bouldering: means ascending boulders or small outcrops with no artificial aids (free climbing) and due to the lower height, with no protection (making bouldering a form of free soloing); very tall boulders where a fall could be serious (i.e. up to 10-metres) are known as highball bouldering. + Competition climbing: A regulated competitive sport of recent origins from the 1980s, normally practiced as indoor climbing on artificial climbing walls that resemble natural formations. The International Federation of Sport Climbing (IFSC) is the official governing body for competition rock climbing worldwide and is recognized by the IOC and GAISF and is a member of the International World Games Association (IWGA). The UIAA is the official governing body for competition ice climbing worldwide. Competition rock climbing has three major disciplines: Lead climbing (performed as sport climbing), Bouldering, and Speed climbing (performed as top roping); competition climbing is sometimes confusingly called "sport climbing". + +Other mountain-based + + Alpine climbing: Ascending large routes that require rock, ice, and mixed climbing skills but with minimal equipment and no outside support. + Ice climbing: Ascending ice or hard snow using equipment such as ice axes and crampons, but also equipment from rock climbing such as ropes. + Mixed climbing: Ascending routes using ice climbing equipment where there is both rock and ice (called dry-tooling if there is no ice). + Mountaineering: Ascending mountains, which can involve some rock or ice climbing, but unlike alpine climbing can involve support and fixed ropes. + Via ferrata: Ascending mountain routes using previously installed fixed steel cables, metal rungs, and ladders for protection and aid. + Scrambling: Climbing rocky faces and ridges, which can include basic rock climbing, but is considered part of hillwalking. + Solo climbing: Ascending routes alone; can involve ropes (roped solo climbing) and artificial aid; where no protection or aid is used, it is free soloing. + +Other recreational-based + + Buildering: Ascending the exterior skeletons of buildings, typically without protective equipment (e.g. as free solo climbing by Alain Robert). + Canyoneering: Climbing along canyons for sport or recreation. + Crane climbing: An illicit act of climbing up mechanical cranes, which is a form of buildering. + Grass climbing: An older form of climbing when climbing steep but grassy mountainsides, often requiring ropes, was undertaken. + Mallakhamba: A traditional Indian sport that combines climbing a pole or rope with the performance of aerial yoga and gymnastics. + Parkour: A sport based around smooth movement, including climbing, around urban landscapes. + Pole climbing: Climbing poles and masts without equipment. + Rope climbing: Climbing a short, thick rope for speed; not to be confused with roped climbing, as used in rock or ice climbing. + Stair climbing: ascending elevation via stairs. + Tree climbing: Recreationally ascending trees using ropes and other protective equipment. + +Commercial-based + + Rope access: Industrial climbing, usually abseiling, as an alternative to scaffolding for short works on exposed structures. + A tower climber is a professional who climbs broadcasting or telecommunication towers or masts for maintenance or repair. + +In film + +Climbing has been the subject of both narrative and documentary film. Notable examples include Touching the Void, Everest, Cliffhanger, 14 Peaks, and Free Solo. The Reel Rock Film Tour is a traveling film festival that exclusively screens climbing and adventure films. + +Gallery + +See also + + List of climbers + Glossary of climbing terms + +References + +External links +Rock climbing: from ancient practice to Olympic sport, Freddie Wilkinson, (National Geographic, March 2019) +Rock climbing - history & factfile, BBC (2022) +The Continuity Irish Republican Army (Continuity IRA or CIRA), styling itself as the Irish Republican Army (), is an Irish republican paramilitary group that aims to bring about a united Ireland. It claims to be a direct continuation of the original Irish Republican Army and the national army of the Irish Republic that was proclaimed in 1916. It emerged from a split in the Provisional IRA in 1986 but did not become active until the Provisional IRA ceasefire of 1994. It is an illegal organisation in the Republic of Ireland and is designated a terrorist organisation in the United Kingdom, New Zealand and the United States. It has links with the political party Republican Sinn Féin (RSF). + +Since 1994, the CIRA has waged a campaign in Northern Ireland against the British Army and the Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI), formerly the Royal Ulster Constabulary. This is part of a wider campaign against the British security forces by dissident republican paramilitaries. It has targeted the security forces in gun attacks and bombings, as well as with grenades, mortars and rockets. The CIRA has also carried out bombings with the goal of causing economic harm and/or disruption, as well as many punishment attacks on alleged criminals. + +To date, it has been responsible for the death of one PSNI officer. The CIRA is smaller and less active than the Real IRA, and there have been a number of splits within the organisation since the mid-2000s. + +Origins +The Continuity IRA has its origins in a split in the Provisional IRA. In September 1986, the Provisional IRA held a General Army Convention (GAC), the organisation's supreme decision-making body. It was the first GAC in 16 years. The meeting, which like all such meetings was secret, was convened to discuss among other resolutions, the articles of the Provisional IRA constitution which dealt with abstentionism, specifically its opposition to the taking of seats in Dáil Éireann (the parliament of the Republic of Ireland). The GAC passed motions (by the necessary two-thirds majority) allowing members of the Provisional IRA to discuss and debate the taking of parliamentary seats, and the removal of the ban on members of the organisation from supporting any successful republican candidate who took their seat in Dáil Éireann. + +The Provisional IRA convention delegates opposed to the change in the constitution claimed that the convention was gerrymandered "by the creation of new IRA organisational structures for the convention, including the combinations of Sligo-Roscommon-Longford and Wicklow-Wexford-Waterford." The only IRA body that supported this viewpoint was the outgoing IRA Executive. Those members of the outgoing Executive who opposed the change comprised a quorum. They met, dismissed those in favour of the change, and set up a new Executive. They contacted Tom Maguire, who was a commander in the old IRA and had supported the Provisionals against the Official IRA (see Irish republican legitimatism), and asked him for support. Maguire had also been contacted by supporters of Gerry Adams, then president of Sinn Féin, and a supporter of the change in the Provisional IRA constitution. + +Maguire rejected Adams' supporters, supported the IRA Executive members opposed to the change, and named the new organisers the Continuity Army Council. In a 1986 statement, he rejected "the legitimacy of an Army Council styling itself the Council of the Irish Republican Army which lends support to any person or organisation styling itself as Sinn Féin and prepared to enter the partition parliament of Leinster House." In 1987, Maguire described the "Continuity Executive" as the "lawful Executive of the Irish Republican Army." + +Campaign + +Initially, the Continuity IRA did not reveal its existence, either in the form of press statements or paramilitary activity. Although the Garda Síochána had suspicions that the organisation existed, they were unsure of its name, labelling it the "Irish National Republican Army". On 21 January 1994, on the 75th anniversary of the First Dáil Éireann, a group of men in paramilitary dress offered a "final salute" to Tom Maguire by firing over his grave. A public statement headed "Irish Republican Publicity Bureau" signed "B Ó Ruairc, Rúnaí [Secretary]" identifying the firing party as "Volunteers of Óglaigh na hÉireann-the Irish Republican Army", and two accompanying photos were published in Saoirse Irish Freedom. Garda Special Branch detectives raided the headquarters of Republican Sinn Féin at Arran Quay, Dublin, two days after the graveside volley, seizing files and questioning staff. In February 1994 it was reported that in previous months Gardaí had found arms dumps along the Cooley Peninsula in County Louth that did not belong to the Provisional IRA, and forensics tests determined had been used for firing practice recently. + +It was only after the Provisional IRA declared a ceasefire in 1994 that the Continuity IRA became active, announcing its intention to continue the campaign against British rule. The CIRA continues to oppose the Good Friday Agreement and, unlike the Provisional IRA (and the Real IRA in 1998), the CIRA has not announced a ceasefire or agreed to participate in weapons decommissioning—nor is there any evidence that it will. In the 18th Independent Monitoring Commission's report, the RIRA, the CIRA and the Irish National Liberation Army (INLA) were deemed a potential future threat. The CIRA was labelled "active, dangerous and committed and... capable of a greater level of violent and other crime". Like the RIRA and RIRA splinter group Óglaigh na hÉireann, it too sought funds for expansion. It is also known to have worked with the INLA. + +The CIRA has been involved in a number of bombing and shooting incidents. Targets of the CIRA have included the British military, the Northern Ireland police (both the Royal Ulster Constabulary and its successor the Police Service of Northern Ireland). Since the Good Friday Agreement in 1998 the CIRA, along with other paramilitaries opposing the ceasefire, have been involved with a countless number of punishment shootings and beatings. By 2005 the CIRA was believed to be an established presence on the island of Great Britain with the capability of launching attacks. A bomb defused in Dublin in December 2005 was believed to have been the work of the CIRA. In February 2006, the Independent Monitoring Commission (IMC) blamed the CIRA for planting four bombs in Northern Ireland during the final quarter of 2005, as well as several hoax bomb warnings. The IMC also blamed the CIRA for the killings of two former CIRA members in Belfast, who had stolen CIRA weapons and established a rival organisation. + +The CIRA continued to be active in both planning and undertaking attacks on the PSNI. The IMC said they tried to lure police into ambushes, while they have also taken to stoning and using petrol bombs. In addition, other assaults, robbery, tiger kidnapping, extortion, fuel laundering and smuggling were undertaken by the group. The CIRA also actively took part in recruiting and training members, including disgruntled former Provisional IRA members. As a result of this continued activity the IMC said the group remained "a very serious threat". + +On 10 March 2009 the CIRA claimed responsibility for the fatal shooting of a PSNI officer in Craigavon, County Armagh—the first police fatality in Northern Ireland since 1998. The officer was fatally shot by a sniper as he and a colleague investigated "suspicious activity" at a house nearby when a window was smashed by youths causing the occupant to phone the police. The PSNI officers responded to the emergency call, giving a CIRA sniper the chance to shoot and kill officer Stephen Carroll. Carroll was killed two days after the Real IRA's 2009 Massereene Barracks shooting at Massereene Barracks in Antrim. In a press interview with Republican Sinn Féin some days later, regarded by some to be the political wing of the Continuity IRA, Richard Walsh described the attacks as "acts of war". + +In 2013, the Continuity IRA's 'South Down Brigade' threatened a Traveller family in Newry and published a statement in the local newspaper. There were negotiations with community representatives and the CIRA announced the threat was lifted. It was believed the threat was issued after a Traveller feud which resulted in a pipe bomb attack in Bessbrook, near Newry. The Continuity IRA is believed to be strongest in the County Fermanagh – North County Armagh area (Craigavon, Armagh and Lurgan). It is believed to be behind a number of attacks such as pipe bombings, rocket attacks, gun attacks, and the PSNI claimed it orchestrated riots a number of times to lure police officers into areas such as Kilwilkie in Lurgan and Drumbeg in Craigavon in order to attack them. It also claimed the group orchestrated a riot during a security alert in Lurgan. The alert turned out to be a hoax. + +On Easter 2016, the Continuity IRA marched in paramilitary uniforms through North Lurgan, Co Armagh, without any hindrance from the PSNI who monitored the parade from a police helicopter. + +In July and August 2019 the CIRA carried out attempted bomb attacks on the PSNI in Craigavon, County Armagh and Wattlebridge, County Fermanagh. + +On 5 February 2020, a bomb planted by the CIRA was found by the PSNI in a lorry in Lurgan. The CIRA believed the lorry was going to be put on a North Channel ferry to Scotland in January 2020. + +Claim to legitimacy + Similar to the claim put forward by the Provisional IRA after its split from the Official IRA in 1969, the Continuity IRA claims to be the legitimate continuation of the original Irish Republican Army or Óglaigh na hÉireann. This argument is based on the view that the surviving anti-Treaty members of the Second Dáil delegated their "authority" to the IRA Army Council in 1938. As further justification for this claim, Tom Maguire, one of those anti-Treaty members of the Second Dáil, issued a statement in favour of the Continuity IRA, just as he had done in 1969 in favour of the Provisionals. J. Bowyer Bell, in his The Irish Troubles, describes Maguire's opinion in 1986: "abstentionism was a basic tenet of republicanism, a moral issue of principle. Abstentionism gave the movement legitimacy, the right to wage war, to speak for a Republic all but established in the hearts of the people". Maguire's stature was such that a delegation from Gerry Adams sought his support in 1986, but was rejected.Robert W. White, Ruairí Ó Brádaigh, The Life and Politics of an Irish Revolutionary, 2006, p. 310. + +Relationship to other organisations +These changes within the IRA were accompanied by changes on the political side and at the 1986 Sinn Féin Ard Fheis (party conference), which followed the IRA Convention, the party's policy of abstentionism, which forbade Sinn Féin elected representatives from taking seats in the Oireachtas, the parliament of the Republic, was dropped. On 2 November, the 628 delegates present cast their votes, the result being 429 to 161. The traditionalists, having lost at both conventions, walked out of the Mansion House, met that evening at the West County Hotel, and reformed as Republican Sinn Féin (RSF). + +According to a report in the Cork Examiner, the Continuity IRA's first chief of staff was Dáithí Ó Conaill, who also served as the first chairman of RSF from 1986 to 1987. The Continuity IRA and RSF perceive themselves as forming a "true" Republican Movement. + +Structure and status +The leadership of the Continuity IRA is believed to be based in the provinces of Munster and Ulster. It was alleged that its chief of staff was a Limerick man and that a number of other key members were from that county, until their expulsion. Dáithí Ó Conaill was the first chief of staff until 1991. In 2004 the United States (US) government believed the Continuity IRA consisted of fewer than fifty hardcore activists. In 2005, Irish Minister for Justice, Equality and Law Reform Michael McDowell told Dáil Éireann that the organisation had a maximum of 150 members. + +The CIRA is an illegal organisation under UK (section 11(1) of the Terrorism Act 2000) and ROI law due to the use of 'IRA' in the group's name, in a situation analogous to that of the Real Irish Republican Army (RIRA). Membership of the organisation is punishable by a sentence of up to ten years imprisonment under UK law. On 31 May 2001 Dermot Gannon became the first person to be convicted of membership of the CIRA solely on the word of a Garda Síochána chief superintendent. On 13 July 2004, the US government designated the CIRA as a 'Foreign Terrorist Organization'. This made it illegal for Americans to provide material support to the CIRA, requires US financial institutions to block the group's assets and denies alleged CIRA members visas into the US. + +External aid and arsenal +The US government suspects the Continuity IRA of having received funds and arms from supporters in the United States. Security sources in Ireland have expressed the suspicion that, in co-operation with the RIRA, the Continuity IRA may have acquired arms and materiel from the Balkans. They also suspect that the Continuity IRA arsenal contains some weapons that were taken from Provisional IRA arms dumps, including a few dozen rifles, machine guns, and pistols; a small amount of the explosive Semtex; and a few dozen detonators. + +Internal tension and splits + +In 2005, several members of the CIRA, who were serving prison sentences in Portlaoise Prison for paramilitary activity, left the organisation. Some transferred to the INLA landing of the prison, but the majority of those who left are now independent and on E4 landing. The remaining CIRA prisoners have moved to D Wing. Supporters of the Continuity IRA leadership claim that this resulted from an internal disagreement, which although brought to a conclusion, was followed by some people leaving the organisation anyway. Supporters of the disaffected members established the Concerned Group for Republican Prisoners. Most of those who had left went back to the CIRA, or dissociated themselves from the CGRP, which is now defunct. + +In February 2006, the Independent Monitoring Commission claimed in a report on paramilitary activity that two groups, styling themselves as "Óglaigh na hÉireann" and "Saoirse na hÉireann", had been formed after a split in the Continuity IRA either in early 2006 or late 2005. The Óglaigh na hÉireann group was responsible for a number of pipe bomb attacks on the PSNI, bomb hoaxes, and robberies, the IMC also claimed the organisation was responsible for the killing of Andrew Burns on 12 February 2008 and was seeking to recruit former members of the RIRA. The Saoirse na hÉireann (SNH) group was composed of "disaffected and largely young republicans" and was responsible for a number of bomb hoaxes, two of which took place in September 2006. It was thought to have operated largely in republican areas of Belfast . The groups had apparently ceased operations by early 2009. + +In 2007, the Continuity IRA was responsible for shooting dead two of its members who had left and attempted to create their own organisation. Upon leaving the CIRA, they had allegedly taken a number of guns with them. The Continuity IRA is believed by Gardaí to have been involved in a number of gangland killings in Dublin and Limerick. + +In July 2010, members of a "militant Northern-based faction within the CIRA" led by a well-known member from south Londonderry claimed to have overthrown the leadership of the organisation. They also claimed that an Army Convention representing "95 per cent of volunteers" had unanimously elected a new 12-member Army Executive, which in turn appointed a new seven-member Army Council. The moves came as a result of dissatisfication with the southern-based leadership and the apparent winding-down of military operations. A senior source from RSF said: "We would see them [the purported new leadership] as just another splinter group that has broken away." This organisation is referred to as the Real CIRA. + +In June 2011 CIRA member Liam Kenny was murdered, allegedly by drug dealers, at his home in Clondalkin, West Dublin. On 28 November 2011 an innocent man was mistakenly shot dead in retaliation for the murder of Liam Kenny. Limerick Real IRA volunteer Rose Lynch pleaded guilty to this murder at the Special Criminal Court and was sentenced to life imprisonment. + +In July 2012 the CIRA announced it had a new leadership after expelling members who had been working against the organisation. + +In April 2014 a former leading member of the Belfast Continuity IRA who had been expelled from the organisation, Tommy Crossan, was shot dead. + +In popular culture +The CIRA are depicted in RTÉ's TV series crime drama Love/Hate''. + +Notes + +References + + +Irish republican militant groups +Organised crime groups in Ireland +1986 establishments in Ireland +Congo may refer to: + + Congo River, in central Africa + Congo Basin, the sedimentary basin of the river + Democratic Republic of the Congo, the larger country to the southeast, sometimes referred to as "Congo-Kinshasa" + Republic of the Congo, the smaller country to the northwest, sometimes referred to as "Congo-Brazzaville" + +Places + +Africa + Congo Canyon, a submarine canyon + Kingdom of Kongo (1390–1914) + Kingdom of Kakongo (15th century–1885) + Congo Free State (1885–1908) + Republic of the Congo (Léopoldville) or Congo-Léopoldville (1960–1971) + People's Republic of the Congo (1969–1992) + Kongo, Ghana, town in Ghana + Kongo, Liberia, small town in Liberia + +Former colonies + Belgian Congo (modern-day Democratic Republic of the Congo) + French Congo (modern-day Republic of the Congo) + Portuguese Congo (modern-day Kabinda, Angola) + +United States + Congo, Alabama + Congo, Missouri + Congo, Pennsylvania + Congo, West Virginia + Congo Cay, United States Virgin Islands + +Elsewhere + Congo, New South Wales, Australia + Congo, Paraíba, Brazil + Congo River (disambiguation), a list of rivers with the name + Congo Town, a village in Andros Island, Bahamas + Congo Volcano or Congo Mountain, in Costa Rica + +Languages and ethnic groups + Niger–Congo languages + Kongo languages + Kongo language, a Bantu language + Kongo people, a Bantu ethnic group + +Arts and entertainment + +Music + The Congos, a reggae vocal group from Jamaica + Congo (album), 1979 + "Congo" (song), by Genesis, 1997 + Kongos (band), a South African American band + +Other uses in arts, entertainment, and media + Congo (novel), a 1980 novel by Michael Crichton + Congo (film), a 1995 film based on the novel + Congo (chess variant), using a 7×7 gameboard + Congo (pinball), a 1995 pinball machine + Congo (TV series), a 2001 nature documentary + Congo – A Political Tragedy, a 2018 documentary film + Congo: The Epic History of a People, a 2010 book by David van Reybrouck + Kongo (1932 film), an American film + +People + Edwin Congo (born 1976), Colombian footballer + Louis Congo (fl. 1725), emancipated slave appointed public executioner of French Louisiana + Richard Congo (born 1961), American basketball player + Cheick Kongo (born 1975), French mixed martial arts fighter and kickboxer + John Kongos (born 1945), South African singer and songwriter + Kongo Kong, wrestling ring name of Steven Wilson (born 1979) + +Other uses + Congo (chimpanzee), a chimpanzee who learned how to draw and paint + Congo (loa), a voodoo spirit + Congo Airways, the flag carrier of the Democratic Republic of the Congo + Congo Airlines, a former airline + , a Royal Navy ship + Conference of NGOs (CoNGO), a membership association of non-governmental organizations + Kongo University, in the Democratic Republic of the Congo + Congo Brands, the manufacturer of Prime (drink) + +See also + + + + + Conga (disambiguation) + Congolese (disambiguation) + King Kong (disambiguation) + Kongo (disambiguation) + Kongō (disambiguation) + Kongolo (disambiguation) + Congoid, an outdated historical grouping of various people + Kakongo, former kingdom + +Language and nationality disambiguation pages +The Copenhagen interpretation is a collection of views about the meaning of quantum mechanics, stemming from the work of Niels Bohr, Werner Heisenberg, Max Born, and others. The term "Copenhagen interpretation" was apparently coined by Heisenberg during the 1950s to refer to ideas developed in the 1925–1927 period, glossing over his disagreements with Bohr. Consequently, there is no definitive historical statement of what the interpretation entails. Features common across versions of the Copenhagen interpretation include the idea that quantum mechanics is intrinsically indeterministic, with probabilities calculated using the Born rule, and the principle of complementarity, which states that objects have certain pairs of complementary properties that cannot all be observed or measured simultaneously. Moreover, the act of "observing" or "measuring" an object is irreversible, and no truth can be attributed to an object except according to the results of its measurement (that is, the Copenhagen interpretation rejects counterfactual definiteness). Copenhagen-type interpretations hold that quantum descriptions are objective, in that they are independent of physicists' personal beliefs and other arbitrary mental factors. + +Over the years, there have been many objections to aspects of Copenhagen-type interpretations, including the discontinuous and stochastic nature of the "observation" or "measurement" process, the apparent subjectivity of requiring an observer, the difficulty of defining what might count as a measuring device, and the seeming reliance upon classical physics in describing such devices. Still, including all the variations, the interpretation remains one of the most commonly taught. + +Background + +Starting in 1900, investigations into atomic and subatomic phenomena forced a revision to the basic concepts of classical physics. However, it was not until a quarter-century had elapsed that the revision reached the status of a coherent theory. During the intervening period, now known as the time of the "old quantum theory", physicists worked with approximations and heuristic corrections to classical physics. Notable results from this period include Max Planck's calculation of the blackbody radiation spectrum, Albert Einstein's explanation of the photoelectric effect, Einstein and Peter Debye's work on the specific heat of solids, Niels Bohr and Hendrika Johanna van Leeuwen's proof that classical physics cannot account for diamagnetism, Bohr's model of the hydrogen atom and Arnold Sommerfeld's extension of the Bohr model to include relativistic effects. From 1922 through 1925, this method of heuristic corrections encountered increasing difficulties; for example, the Bohr–Sommerfeld model could not be extended from hydrogen to the next simplest case, the helium atom. + +The transition from the old quantum theory to full-fledged quantum physics began in 1925, when Werner Heisenberg presented a treatment of electron behavior based on discussing only "observable" quantities, meaning to Heisenberg the frequencies of light that atoms absorbed and emitted. Max Born then realized that in Heisenberg's theory, the classical variables of position and momentum would instead be represented by matrices, mathematical objects that can be multiplied together like numbers with the crucial difference that the order of multiplication matters. Erwin Schrödinger presented an equation that treated the electron as a wave, and Born discovered that the way to successfully interpret the wave function that appeared in the Schrödinger equation was as a tool for calculating probabilities. + +Quantum mechanics cannot easily be reconciled with everyday language and observation, and has often seemed counter-intuitive to physicists, including its inventors. The ideas grouped together as the Copenhagen interpretation suggest a way to think about how the mathematics of quantum theory relates to physical reality. + +Origin and use of the term + +The term refers to the city of Copenhagen in Denmark, and was apparently coined during the 1950s. Earlier, during the mid-1920s, Heisenberg had been an assistant to Bohr at his institute in Copenhagen, where they helped originate quantum mechanical theory. At the 1927 Solvay Conference, a dual talk by Max Born and Heisenberg declared "we consider quantum mechanics to be a closed theory, whose fundamental physical and mathematical assumptions are no longer susceptible of any modification." In 1929, Heisenberg gave a series of invited lectures at the University of Chicago explaining the new field of quantum mechanics. The lectures then served as the basis for his textbook, The Physical Principles of the Quantum Theory, published in 1930. In the book's preface, Heisenberg wrote: + +On the whole, the book contains nothing that is not to be found in previous publications, particularly in the investigations of Bohr. The purpose of the book seems to me to be fulfilled if it contributes somewhat to the diffusion of that 'Kopenhagener Geist der Quantentheorie' [Copenhagen spirit of quantum theory] if I may so express myself, which has directed the entire development of modern atomic physics. + +The term 'Copenhagen interpretation' suggests something more than just a spirit, such as some definite set of rules for interpreting the mathematical formalism of quantum mechanics, presumably dating back to the 1920s. However, no such text exists, and the writings of Bohr and Heisenberg contradict each other on several important issues. It appears that the particular term, with its more definite sense, was coined by Heisenberg around 1955, while criticizing alternative "interpretations" (e.g., David Bohm's) that had been developed. Lectures with the titles 'The Copenhagen Interpretation of Quantum Theory' and 'Criticisms and Counterproposals to the Copenhagen Interpretation', that Heisenberg delivered in 1955, are reprinted in the collection Physics and Philosophy. Before the book was released for sale, Heisenberg privately expressed regret for having used the term, due to its suggestion of the existence of other interpretations, that he considered to be "nonsense". In a 1960 review of Heisenberg's book, Bohr's close collaborator Léon Rosenfeld called the term an "ambiguous expression" and suggested it be discarded. However, this did not come to pass, and the term entered widespread use. + +Principles +There is no uniquely definitive statement of the Copenhagen interpretation. The term encompasses the views developed by a number of scientists and philosophers during the second quarter of the 20th century. This lack of a single, authoritative source that establishes the Copenhagen interpretation is one difficulty with discussing it; another complication is that the philosophical background familiar to Einstein, Bohr, Heisenberg, and contemporaries is much less so to physicists and even philosophers of physics in more recent times. Bohr and Heisenberg never totally agreed on how to understand the mathematical formalism of quantum mechanics, and Bohr distanced himself from what he considered Heisenberg's more subjective interpretation. Bohr offered an interpretation that is independent of a subjective observer, or measurement, or collapse; instead, an "irreversible" or effectively irreversible process causes the decay of quantum coherence which imparts the classical behavior of "observation" or "measurement". + +Different commentators and researchers have associated various ideas with the term. Asher Peres remarked that very different, sometimes opposite, views are presented as "the Copenhagen interpretation" by different authors. N. David Mermin coined the phrase "Shut up and calculate!" to summarize Copenhagen-type views, a saying often misattributed to Richard Feynman and which Mermin later found insufficiently nuanced. Mermin described the Copenhagen interpretation as coming in different "versions", "varieties", or "flavors". + +Some basic principles generally accepted as part of the interpretation include the following: + Quantum mechanics is intrinsically indeterministic. + The correspondence principle: in the appropriate limit, quantum theory comes to resemble classical physics and reproduces the classical predictions. + The Born rule: the wave function of a system yields probabilities for the outcomes of measurements upon that system. + Complementarity: certain properties cannot be jointly defined for the same system at the same time. In order to talk about a specific property of a system, that system must be considered within the context of a specific laboratory arrangement. Observable quantities corresponding to mutually exclusive laboratory arrangements cannot be predicted together, but considering multiple such mutually exclusive experiments is necessary to characterize a system. + +Hans Primas and Roland Omnès give a more detailed breakdown that, in addition to the above, includes the following: + Quantum physics applies to individual objects. The probabilities computed by the Born rule do not require an ensemble or collection of "identically prepared" systems to understand. + The results provided by measuring devices are essentially classical, and should be described in ordinary language. This was particularly emphasized by Bohr, and was accepted by Heisenberg. + Per the above point, the device used to observe a system must be described in classical language, while the system under observation is treated in quantum terms. This is a particularly subtle issue for which Bohr and Heisenberg came to differing conclusions. According to Heisenberg, the boundary between classical and quantum can be shifted in either direction at the observer's discretion. That is, the observer has the freedom to move what would become known as the "Heisenberg cut" without changing any physically meaningful predictions. On the other hand, Bohr argued both systems are quantum in principle, and the object-instrument distinction (the "cut") is dictated by the experimental arrangement. For Bohr, the "cut" was not a change in the dynamical laws that govern the systems in question, but a change in the language applied to them. + During an observation, the system must interact with a laboratory device. When that device makes a measurement, the wave function of the system collapses, irreversibly reducing to an eigenstate of the observable that is registered. The result of this process is a tangible record of the event, made by a potentiality becoming an actuality. + Statements about measurements that are not actually made do not have meaning. For example, there is no meaning to the statement that a photon traversed the upper path of a Mach–Zehnder interferometer unless the interferometer were actually built in such a way that the path taken by the photon is detected and registered. + Wave functions are objective, in that they do not depend upon personal opinions of individual physicists or other such arbitrary influences. + +There are some fundamental agreements and disagreements between the views of Bohr and Heisenberg. For example, Heisenberg emphasized a sharp "cut" between the observer (or the instrument) and the system being observed, while Bohr offered an interpretation that is independent of a subjective observer or measurement or collapse, which relies on an "irreversible" or effectively irreversible process, which could take place within the quantum system. + +Another issue of importance where Bohr and Heisenberg disagreed is wave–particle duality. Bohr maintained that the distinction between a wave view and a particle view was defined by a distinction between experimental setups, whereas Heisenberg held that it was defined by the possibility of viewing the mathematical formulas as referring to waves or particles. Bohr thought that a particular experimental setup would display either a wave picture or a particle picture, but not both. Heisenberg thought that every mathematical formulation was capable of both wave and particle interpretations. + +Nature of the wave function +A wave function is a mathematical entity that provides a probability distribution for the outcomes of each possible measurement on a system. Knowledge of the wave function together with the rules for the system's evolution in time exhausts all that can be predicted about the system's behavior. Generally, Copenhagen-type interpretations deny that the wave function provides a directly apprehensible image of an ordinary material body or a discernible component of some such, or anything more than a theoretical concept. + +Probabilities via the Born rule + +The Born rule is essential to the Copenhagen interpretation. Formulated by Max Born in 1926, it gives the probability that a measurement of a quantum system will yield a given result. In its simplest form, it states that the probability density of finding a particle at a given point, when measured, is proportional to the square of the magnitude of the particle's wave function at that point. + +Collapse + +The concept of wave function collapse postulates that the wave function of a system can change suddenly and discontinuously upon measurement. Prior to a measurement, a wave function involves the various probabilities for the different potential outcomes of that measurement. But when the apparatus registers one of those outcomes, no traces of the others linger. Since Bohr did not view the wavefunction as something physical, he never talks about "collapse". Nevertheless, many physicists and philosophers associate collapse with the Copenhagen interpretation. + +Heisenberg spoke of the wave function as representing available knowledge of a system, and did not use the term "collapse", but instead termed it "reduction" of the wave function to a new state representing the change in available knowledge which occurs once a particular phenomenon is registered by the apparatus. + +Role of the observer +Because they assert that the existence of an observed value depends upon the intercession of the observer, Copenhagen-type interpretations are sometimes called "subjective". This term is rejected by many Copenhagenists because the process of observation is mechanical and does not depend on the individuality of the observer. Wolfgang Pauli, for example, insisted that measurement results could be obtained and recorded by "objective registering apparatus". As Heisenberg wrote, + +In the 1970s and 1980s, the theory of decoherence helped to explain the appearance of quasi-classical realities emerging from quantum theory, but was insufficient to provide a technical explanation for the apparent wave function collapse. + +Completion by hidden variables? + +In metaphysical terms, the Copenhagen interpretation views quantum mechanics as providing knowledge of phenomena, but not as pointing to 'really existing objects', which it regards as residues of ordinary intuition. This makes it an epistemic theory. This may be contrasted with Einstein's view, that physics should look for 'really existing objects', making itself an ontic theory. + +The metaphysical question is sometimes asked: "Could quantum mechanics be extended by adding so-called "hidden variables" to the mathematical formalism, to convert it from an epistemic to an ontic theory?" The Copenhagen interpretation answers this with a strong 'No'. It is sometimes alleged, for example by J.S. Bell, that Einstein opposed the Copenhagen interpretation because he believed that the answer to that question of "hidden variables" was "yes". By contrast, Max Jammer writes "Einstein never proposed a hidden variable theory." Einstein explored the possibility of a hidden variable theory, and wrote a paper describing his exploration, but withdrew it from publication because he felt it was faulty. + +Acceptance among physicists +During the 1930s and 1940s, views about quantum mechanics attributed to Bohr and emphasizing complementarity became commonplace among physicists. Textbooks of the time generally maintained the principle that the numerical value of a physical quantity is not meaningful or does not exist until it is measured. Prominent physicists associated with Copenhagen-type interpretations have included Lev Landau, Wolfgang Pauli, Rudolf Peierls, Asher Peres, Léon Rosenfeld, and Ray Streater. + +Throughout much of the 20th century, the Copenhagen tradition had overwhelming acceptance among physicists. According to a very informal poll (some people voted for multiple interpretations) conducted at a quantum mechanics conference in 1997, the Copenhagen interpretation remained the most widely accepted label that physicists applied to their own views. A similar result was found in a poll conducted in 2011. + +Consequences +The nature of the Copenhagen interpretation is exposed by considering a number of experiments and paradoxes. + +Schrödinger's cat + +This thought experiment highlights the implications that accepting uncertainty at the microscopic level has on macroscopic objects. A cat is put in a sealed box, with its life or death made dependent on the state of a subatomic particle. Thus a description of the cat during the course of the experiment—having been entangled with the state of a subatomic particle—becomes a "blur" of "living and dead cat." But this can't be accurate because it implies the cat is actually both dead and alive until the box is opened to check on it. But the cat, if it survives, will only remember being alive. Schrödinger resists "so naively accepting as valid a 'blurred model' for representing reality." How can the cat be both alive and dead? + +In Copenhagen-type views, the wave function reflects our knowledge of the system. The wave function means that, once the cat is observed, there is a 50% chance it will be dead, and 50% chance it will be alive. (Some versions of the Copenhagen interpretation reject the idea that a wave function can be assigned to a physical system that meets the everyday definition of "cat"; in this view, the correct quantum-mechanical description of the cat-and-particle system must include a superselection rule.) + +Wigner's friend + +"Wigner's friend" is a thought experiment intended to make that of Schrödinger's cat more striking by involving two conscious beings, traditionally known as Wigner and his friend. (In more recent literature, they may also be known as Alice and Bob, per the convention of describing protocols in information theory.) Wigner puts his friend in with the cat. The external observer believes the system is in state . However, his friend is convinced that the cat is alive, i.e. for him, the cat is in the state . How can Wigner and his friend see different wave functions? + +In a Heisenbergian view, the answer depends on the positioning of Heisenberg cut, which can be placed arbitrarily (at least according to Heisenberg, though not to Bohr). If Wigner's friend is positioned on the same side of the cut as the external observer, his measurements collapse the wave function for both observers. If he is positioned on the cat's side, his interaction with the cat is not considered a measurement. Different Copenhagen-type interpretations take different positions as to whether observers can be placed on the quantum side of the cut. + +Double-slit experiment + +In the basic version of this experiment, a light source, such as a laser beam, illuminates a plate pierced by two parallel slits, and the light passing through the slits is observed on a screen behind the plate. The wave nature of light causes the light waves passing through the two slits to interfere, producing bright and dark bands on the screen – a result that would not be expected if light consisted of classical particles. However, the light is always found to be absorbed at the screen at discrete points, as individual particles (not waves); the interference pattern appears via the varying density of these particle hits on the screen. Furthermore, versions of the experiment that include detectors at the slits find that each detected photon passes through one slit (as would a classical particle), and not through both slits (as would a wave). Such experiments demonstrate that particles do not form the interference pattern if one detects which slit they pass through. + +According to Bohr's complementarity principle, light is neither a wave nor a stream of particles. A particular experiment can demonstrate particle behavior (passing through a definite slit) or wave behavior (interference), but not both at the same time. + +The same experiment has been performed for light, electrons, atoms, and molecules. The extremely small de Broglie wavelength of objects with larger mass makes experiments increasingly difficult, but in general quantum mechanics considers all matter as possessing both particle and wave behaviors. + +Einstein–Podolsky–Rosen paradox + +This thought experiment involves a pair of particles prepared in what later authors would refer to as an entangled state. In a 1935 paper, Einstein, Boris Podolsky, and Nathan Rosen pointed out that, in this state, if the position of the first particle were measured, the result of measuring the position of the second particle could be predicted. If instead the momentum of the first particle were measured, then the result of measuring the momentum of the second particle could be predicted. They argued that no action taken on the first particle could instantaneously affect the other, since this would involve information being transmitted faster than light, which is forbidden by the theory of relativity. They invoked a principle, later known as the "Einstein–Podolsky–Rosen (EPR) criterion of reality", positing that, "If, without in any way disturbing a system, we can predict with certainty (i.e., with probability equal to unity) the value of a physical quantity, then there exists an element of reality corresponding to that quantity". From this, they inferred that the second particle must have a definite value of position and of momentum prior to either being measured. + +Bohr's response to the EPR paper was published in the Physical Review later that same year. He argued that EPR had reasoned fallaciously. Because measurements of position and of momentum are complementary, making the choice to measure one excludes the possibility of measuring the other. Consequently, a fact deduced regarding one arrangement of laboratory apparatus could not be combined with a fact deduced by means of the other, and so, the inference of predetermined position and momentum values for the second particle was not valid. Bohr concluded that EPR's "arguments do not justify their conclusion that the quantum description turns out to be essentially incomplete." + +Criticism + +Incompleteness and indeterminism + +Einstein was an early and persistent supporter of objective reality. Bohr and Heisenberg advanced the position that no physical property could be understood without an act of measurement, while Einstein refused to accept this. Abraham Pais recalled a walk with Einstein when the two discussed quantum mechanics: "Einstein suddenly stopped, turned to me and asked whether I really believed that the moon exists only when I look at it." While Einstein did not doubt that quantum mechanics was a correct physical theory in that it gave correct predictions, he maintained that it could not be a complete theory. The most famous product of his efforts to argue the incompleteness of quantum theory is the Einstein–Podolsky–Rosen thought experiment, which was intended to show that physical properties like position and momentum have values even if not measured. The argument of EPR was not generally persuasive to other physicists. + +Carl Friedrich von Weizsäcker, while participating in a colloquium at Cambridge, denied that the Copenhagen interpretation asserted "What cannot be observed does not exist". Instead, he suggested that the Copenhagen interpretation follows the principle "What is observed certainly exists; about what is not observed we are still free to make suitable assumptions. We use that freedom to avoid paradoxes." + +Einstein was likewise dissatisfied with the indeterminism of quantum theory. Regarding the possibility of randomness in nature, Einstein said that he was "convinced that He [God] does not throw dice." Bohr, in response, reputedly said that "it cannot be for us to tell God, how he is to run the world". + +The Heisenberg cut +Much criticism of Copenhagen-type interpretations has focused on the need for a classical domain where observers or measuring devices can reside, and the imprecision of how the boundary between quantum and classical might be defined. This boundary came to be termed the Heisenberg cut (while John Bell derisively called it the "shifty split"). As typically portrayed, Copenhagen-type interpretations involve two different kinds of time evolution for wave functions, the deterministic flow according to the Schrödinger equation and the probabilistic jump during measurement, without a clear criterion for when each kind applies. Why should these two different processes exist, when physicists and laboratory equipment are made of the same matter as the rest of the universe? And if there is somehow a split, where should it be placed? Steven Weinberg writes that the traditional presentation gives "no way to locate the boundary between the realms in which [...] quantum mechanics does or does not apply." + +The problem of thinking in terms of classical measurements of a quantum system becomes particularly acute in the field of quantum cosmology, where the quantum system is the universe. How does an observer stand outside the universe in order to measure it, and who was there to observe the universe in its earliest stages? Advocates of Copenhagen-type interpretations have disputed the seriousness of these objections. Rudolf Peierls noted that "the observer does not have to be contemporaneous with the event"; for example, we study the early universe through the cosmic microwave background, and we can apply quantum mechanics to that just as well as to any electromagnetic field. Likewise, Asher Peres argued that physicists are, conceptually, outside those degrees of freedom that cosmology studies, and applying quantum mechanics to the radius of the universe while neglecting the physicists in it is no different from quantizing the electric current in a superconductor while neglecting the atomic-level details. + +Alternatives + +A large number of alternative interpretations have appeared, sharing some aspects of the Copenhagen interpretation while providing alternatives to other aspects. +The ensemble interpretation is similar; it offers an interpretation of the wave function, but not for single particles. The consistent histories interpretation advertises itself as "Copenhagen done right". More recently, interpretations inspired by quantum information theory like QBism and relational quantum mechanics have appeared. Experts on quantum foundational issues continue to favor the Copenhagen interpretation over other alternatives. Physicists who have suggested that the Copenhagen tradition needs to be built upon or extended include Rudolf Haag and Anton Zeilinger. + +Under realism and determinism, if the wave function is regarded as ontologically real, and collapse is entirely rejected, a many-worlds interpretation results. If wave function collapse is regarded as ontologically real as well, an objective collapse theory is obtained. Bohmian mechanics shows that it is possible to reformulate quantum mechanics to make it deterministic, at the price of making it explicitly nonlocal. It attributes not only a wave function to a physical system, but in addition a real position, that evolves deterministically under a nonlocal guiding equation. The evolution of a physical system is given at all times by the Schrödinger equation together with the guiding equation; there is never a collapse of the wave function. The transactional interpretation is also explicitly nonlocal. + +Some physicists espoused views in the "Copenhagen spirit" and then went on to advocate other interpretations. For example, David Bohm and Alfred Landé both wrote textbooks that put forth ideas in the Bohr–Heisenberg tradition, and later promoted nonlocal hidden variables and an ensemble interpretation respectively. John Archibald Wheeler began his career as an "apostle of Niels Bohr"; he then supervised the PhD thesis of Hugh Everett that proposed the many-worlds interpretation. After supporting Everett's work for several years, he began to distance himself from the many-worlds interpretation in the 1970s. Late in life, he wrote that while the Copenhagen interpretation might fairly be called "the fog from the north", it "remains the best interpretation of the quantum that we have". + +Other physicists, while influenced by the Copenhagen tradition, have expressed frustration at how it took the mathematical formalism of quantum theory as given, rather than trying to understand how it might arise from something more fundamental. (E. T. Jaynes described the mathematical formalism of quantum physics as "a peculiar mixture describing in part realities of Nature, in part incomplete human information about Nature—all scrambled up together by Heisenberg and Bohr into an omelette that nobody has seen how to unscramble".) This dissatisfaction has motivated new interpretative variants as well as technical work in quantum foundations. + +See also + +Bohr–Einstein debates +Einstein's thought experiments +Fifth Solvay Conference +Philosophical interpretation of classical physics +Physical ontology +Popper's experiment +Von Neumann–Wigner interpretation + +Notes + +References + +Further reading + + + + + + + + + +Interpretations of quantum mechanics +Quantum measurement +University of Copenhagen +A customs union is generally defined as a type of trade bloc which is composed of a free trade area with a common external tariff. + +Customs unions are established through trade pacts where the participant countries set up common external trade policy (in some cases they use different import quotas). Common competition policy is also helpful to avoid competition deficiency. + +Purposes for establishing a customs union normally include increasing economic efficiency and establishing closer political and cultural ties between the member countries. It is the third stage of economic integration. + +Every economic union, customs and monetary union and economic and monetary union includes a customs union. + +WTO definition +The General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade, part of the World Trade Organization framework defines a customs union in the following way: + +Historical background +The German Customs Union, the Zollverein, which was established in 1834, and gradually developed and expanded, was a customs union organization that appeared earlier and played a role in promoting German economic development and political unification at that time. Before the establishment of the unified German Empire in the 1870s, there were checkpoints between and within the German states, which hindered the development of industry and commerce. In 1818, Prussia took the lead in abolishing the customs duties in the mainland; it was followed by the establishment of the North German Customs Union in 1826. Two years later, two customs unions were established in the states of South Germany. + +In 1834, 18 states joined together to form the German Customs Union with Prussia as the main leader. Thereafter, this alliance was further expanded to all German-speaking regions and became the All-German Customs Union. The contents of the alliance convention included: abolishing internal tariffs, unifying external tariffs, raising import tax rates, and allocating tariff income to all states in the alliance in proportion. In addition, there is a customs union between France and Monaco, which was established in 1865. + +A customs union was established by Switzerland and Liechtenstein in 1924, by Belgium, the Netherlands, and Luxembourg in 1948, by the countries of the European Economic Community in 1958, and by the Economic Community of Central African States in 1964. At that time, the European Free Trade Association was different from the European Economic Community Customs Union. Free trade within the former was limited to industrial products, and no uniform tariffs were imposed on countries outside the Union. + +It was brought into action by the initiative of Prussia and joined by most of the German states. Pre- modern conditions ( 30+ currencies, trade barriers etc.) were viewed as an obstacle as obstacles to o economic exchange and growth by the new commercial classes, who argued for the creation of a unified economic territory allowing the unhindered movement of goods, people and capital. + +Main feature +The main feature of the Customs Union is that the member countries have not only eliminated trade barriers and implemented free trade, but also established a common external tariff. In other words, in addition to agreeing to eliminate each other 's trade barriers, members of the Customs Union also adopt common external tariff and trade policies. GATT stipulates that if the customs union is not established immediately, but is gradually completed over a period of time, it should be completed within a reasonable period, which generally does not exceed 10 years. + +Protect measures +The exclusive protection measures of the Customs Union mainly include the following: + + Reduce tariffs until the tariffs within the union are cancelled. In order to achieve this goal, the alliance often stipulates that the member countries must transition from their current external tariff rates to the unified tariff rates stipulated by the alliance in stages within a certain period of time, until finally canceling tariff. + Formulate a unified foreign trade policy and foreign tariff rates. In terms of foreign affairs, allied members must increase or decrease their original foreign tariff rates within the prescribed time, and eventually establish a common external tariff rate; and gradually unify their foreign trade policies, such as foreign discrimination policies and import quantities. + For goods imported from outside the alliance, common different tariffs are levied, such as preferential tax rates, agreed national tax rates, most-favored nation tax rates, ordinary preferential tax rates, and ordinary tax rates, according to the types of commodities and the provider countries. + Formulate unified protective measures, such as import quotas, health and epidemic prevention standards, etc. + +Meaning + It avoids the problem that the free trade zone needs to be supplemented by the principle of origin to maintain the normal flow of commodities. Here, instead of the principle of origin, a common 'foreign barrier' is built. In this sense, the customs union is more exclusive than the free trade zone. + It makes the 'national sovereignty' of the member countries to be transferred to the economic integration organization to a greater extent, so that once a country joins a customs union, it loses its right to autonomous tariffs. In reality, the more typical customs union is the European Economic Community established in 1958. + +Economic effects +Economic effects of customs unions can generally be grouped into static effects and dynamic effects. + +Static effects +There are trade creation effects and trade diversion effects. The trade creation effect refers to the benefits generated by products from domestic production with higher production costs to the production of customs union countries with lower costs. The trade diversion effect refers to the loss incurred when a product is imported from a non-member country with lower production costs to a member country with a higher cost. This is the price of joining the customs union. When the trade creation effect is greater than the transfer effect, the combined effect of joining the Customs Union on the member countries is net profit, which means an increase in the economic welfare level of the member countries; otherwise, it is a net loss and a decline in the economic welfare level. + +The trade creation effect is usually regarded as a positive effect. This is because the domestic production cost of country A is higher than the production cost of country A 's imports from country B. The Customs Union made Country A give up the domestic production of some commodities and change it to Country B to produce these commodities. From a worldwide perspective, this kind of production conversion improves the efficiency of resource allocation. + +Dynamic effects +The customs union will not only bring static effects to member states, but also bring some dynamic effects to them. Sometimes, this dynamic effect is more important than its static effect, which has an important impact on the economic growth of member countries. + + The first dynamic effect of the customs union is the large market effect (or economies of scale effect). After the establishment of the customs union, good conditions have been created for the mutual export of products between member countries. This expansion of the market has promoted the development of enterprise production, allowing producers to continuously expand production scale, reduce costs, enjoy the benefits of economies of scale, and can further enhance the externality of enterprises within the alliance, especially for non-member companies competitive power. Therefore, the large market effect created by the Customs Union has triggered the realization of economies of scale. + The establishment of the Customs Union has promoted competition among enterprises among member countries. Before the member states formed a customs union, many sectors had formed domestic monopolies, and several enterprises had occupied the domestic market for a long time and obtained excessive monopoly profits. Therefore, it is not conducive to the resource allocation and technological progress of various countries. After the formation of the customs union, due to the mutual openness of the markets of various countries, enterprises of various countries face competition from similar enterprises in other member countries. As a result, in order to gain a favorable position in the competition, enterprises will inevitably increase research and development investment and continuously reduce production costs, thereby creating a strong competitive atmosphere within the alliance, improving economic efficiency, and promoting technological progress. + The establishment of a customs union helps to attract external investment. The establishment of a customs union implies the exclusion of products from non-members. In order to counteract such adverse effects, countries outside the alliance may transfer enterprises to some countries within the customs union to directly produce and sell locally in order to bypass uniform tariff and non-tariff barriers. This objectively generates capital inflows that accompany the transfer of production, attracting large amounts of foreign direct investment. + +Lists of customs unions + +Current + +Additionally, the autonomous and dependent territories such as some of the EU member state special territories are sometimes treated as separate customs territories from their mainland states or have varying arrangements of formal or de facto customs union, common market and currency union (or combinations thereof) with the mainland and in regards to third countries through the trade pacts signed by the mainland state. + +The European Union is a customs union and therefore sets a common external tariff. + +Proposed +2010 Southern African Development Community (SADC) +2011 Economic Community of Central African States (ECCAS) +2015 Arab Customs Union (ACU) +2023 African Economic Community (AEC) + +Defunct +Customs and Economic Union of Central Africa (UDEAC) – superseded by CEMAC + 1925 French Customs Union over occupied Territory of the Saar Basin +The former Zollverein of the Holy Roman Empire and the succeeding German confederations + Steuerverein or Tax Union in north-west Germany + Custom Union between Lebanon and Syria +Czechia and Slovakia from the dissolution of Czechoslovakia on 1 January 1993 until both countries' accession to the European Union on 1 May 2004. + +Further reading + The McGill University Faculty of Law runs a Regional Trade Agreements Database that contains the text of almost all preferential and regional trade agreements in the world. ptas.mcgill.ca + Michael T. Florinsky. 1934. The Saar Struggle. New York: The Macmillan Company. + +See also + European Customs Information Portal (ECIP) + List of international trade topics + Trade creation + Trade diversion + +References + +External links + Agreements Notified to the GATT/WTO and in Force + + +Commercial policy +Economic integration +Trade blocs +The Council of Europe (CoE; , ) is an international organisation established in the wake of World War II to uphold human rights, democracy and the rule of law in Europe. Founded in 1949, it brings together 46 member states, with a population of approximately 675 million; it operates with an annual budget of approximately 500 million euros. + +The organisation is distinct from the European Union (EU), although people sometimes confuse the two organisations – partly because the EU has adopted the original European flag, designed for the Council of Europe in 1955, as well as the European anthem. No country has ever joined the EU without first belonging to the Council of Europe. The Council of Europe is an official United Nations Observer. + +As an international organisation, the Council of Europe cannot make laws, but it does have the ability to push for the enforcement of select international agreements reached by member states on various topics. The best-known body of the Council of Europe is the European Court of Human Rights, which functions on the basis of the European Convention on Human Rights of 1953. + +The council's two statutory bodies are the Committee of Ministers, which comprises the foreign ministers of each member state, and the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE), which is composed of members of the national parliaments of each member state. The Commissioner for Human Rights is an institution within the Council of Europe, mandated to promote awareness of and respect for human rights within the member states. The secretary general presides over the secretariat of the organisation. Other major CoE bodies include the European Directorate for the Quality of Medicines & HealthCare (EDQM) and the European Audiovisual Observatory. + +The headquarters of the Council of Europe, as well as its Court of Human Rights, are situated in Strasbourg, France. The Council uses English and French as its two official languages. The Committee of Ministers, the PACE, and the Congress of the Council of Europe also use German and Italian for some of their work. + +History + +Founding + +In a speech in 1929, French Foreign Minister Aristide Briand floated the idea of an organisation which would gather European nations together in a "federal union" to resolve common problems. The United Kingdom's wartime Prime Minister Winston Churchill first publicly suggested the creation of a "Council of Europe" in a BBC radio broadcast on 21 March 1943, while the Second World War was still raging. In his own words, he tried to "peer through the mists of the future to the end of the war", and think about how to rebuild and maintain peace on a shattered continent. Given that Europe had been at the origin of two world wars, the creation of such a body would be, he suggested, "a stupendous business". He returned to the idea during a well-known speech at the University of Zurich on 19 September 1946, throwing the full weight of his considerable post-war prestige behind it. + +Additionally, there were also many other statesmen and politicians across the continent, many of them members of the European Movement, who were quietly working towards the creation of the council. Some regarded it as a guarantee that the horrors of war – or the human rights violations of the Nazi regime – could never again be visited on the continent, others came to see it as a "club of democracies", built around a set of common values that could stand as a bulwark against totalitarian states belonging to the Eastern Bloc. Others again saw it as a nascent "United States of Europe", the resonant phrase that Churchill had reached for at Zurich in 1946. + +The future structure of the Council of Europe was discussed at the Congress of Europe, which brought together several hundred leading politicians, government representatives and members of civil society in The Hague, Netherlands, in 1948. Responding to the conclusions of the Congress of Europe, the Consultative Council of the Treaty of Brussels convened a Committee for the Study of European Unity, which met eight times from November 1948 to January 1949 to draw up the blueprint of a new broad-based European organisation. + +There were two competing schools of thought: some favoured a classical international organisation with representatives of governments, while others preferred a political forum with parliamentarians. Both approaches were finally combined through the creation of a Committee of Ministers (in which governments were represented) and a Consultative Assembly (in which parliaments were represented), the two main bodies mentioned in the Statute of the Council of Europe. This dual intergovernmental and inter-parliamentary structure was later copied for the European Communities, NATO and OSCE. + +The Council of Europe was signed into existence on 5 May 1949 by the Treaty of London, the organisation's founding Statute which set out the three basic values that should guide its work: democracy, human rights and the rule of law. It was signed in London on that day by ten states: Belgium, Denmark, France, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Norway, Sweden and the United Kingdom, though Turkey and Greece joined three months later. On 10 August 1949, 100 members of the council's Consultative Assembly, parliamentarians drawn from the twelve member nations, met in Strasbourg for its first plenary session, held over 18 sittings and lasting nearly a month. They debated how to reconcile and reconstruct a continent still reeling from war, yet already facing a new East–West divide, launched the radical concept of a trans-national court to protect the basic human rights of every citizen, and took the first steps in a process that would eventually lead to the creation of an offshoot organisation, the European Union. + +In August 1949, Paul-Henri Spaak resigned as Belgium's foreign minister in order to be elected as the first president of the assembly. Behind the scenes, he too had been quietly working towards the creation of the council, and played a key role in steering its early work. However, in December 1951, after nearly three years in the role, Spaak resigned in disappointment after the Assembly rejected proposals for a "European political authority". Convinced that the Council of Europe was never going to be in a position to achieve his long-term goal of a unified Europe, he soon tried again in a new and more promising format, based this time on economic integration, becoming one of the founders of the European Union. + +Early years + +There was huge enthusiasm for the Council of Europe in its early years, as its pioneers set about drafting what was to become the European Convention on Human Rights, a charter of individual rights which – it was hoped – no member government could ever again violate. They drew, in part, on the tenets of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, signed only a few months earlier in Paris. But crucially, where the Universal Declaration was essentially aspirational, the European Convention from the beginning featured an enforcement mechanism – an international Court – which was to adjudicate on alleged violations of its articles and to hold governments to account, a dramatic leap forward for international justice. Today, this is the European Court of Human Rights, whose rulings are binding on 46 European nations, the most far-reaching system of international justice anywhere in the world. + +One of the council's first acts was to welcome West Germany into its fold on 2 May 1951, setting a pattern of post-war reconciliation that was to become a hallmark of the council, and beginning a long process of "enlargement" which was to see the organisation grow from its original ten founding member states to the 46 nations that make up the Council of Europe today. Iceland had already joined in 1950, followed in 1956 by Austria, Cyprus in 1961, Switzerland in 1963 and Malta in 1965. + +Historic speeches at the Council of Europe + +In 2018, an archive of all speeches made to the PACE by heads of state or government since the Council of Europe's creation in 1949 appeared online, the fruit of a two-year project entitled "Voices of Europe". At the time of its launch, the archive comprised 263 speeches delivered over a 70-year period by some 216 presidents, prime ministers, monarchs and religious leaders from 45 countries – though it continues to expand, as new speeches are added every few months. + +Some very early speeches by individuals considered to be "founding figures" of the European institutions, even if they were not heads of state or government at the time, are also included (such as Sir Winston Churchill or Robert Schuman). Addresses by eight monarchs appear in the list (such as King Juan Carlos I of Spain, King Albert II of Belgium and Grand Duke Henri of Luxembourg) as well as the speeches given by religious figures (such as Pope John Paul II, and Pope Francis) and several leaders from countries in the Middle East and North Africa (such as Shimon Peres, Yasser Arafat, Hosni Mubarak, Léopold Sédar Senghor or King Hussein of Jordan). + +The full text of the speeches is given in both English and French, regardless of the original language used. The archive is searchable by country, by name, and chronologically. + +Aims and achievement + +Article 1(a) of the Statute states that "The aim of the Council of Europe is to achieve a greater unity between its members for the purpose of safeguarding and realising the ideals and principles which are their common heritage and facilitating their economic and social progress." Membership is open to all European states who seek harmony, cooperation, good governance and human rights, accepting the principle of the rule of law and are able and willing to guarantee democracy, fundamental human rights and freedoms. + +Whereas the member states of the European Union transfer part of their national legislative and executive powers to the European Commission and the European Parliament, Council of Europe member states maintain their sovereignty but commit themselves through conventions/treaties (international law) and co-operate on the basis of common values and common political decisions. Those conventions and decisions are developed by the member states working together at the Council of Europe. Both organisations function as concentric circles around the common foundations for European cooperation and harmony, with the Council of Europe being the geographically wider circle. The European Union could be seen as the smaller circle with a much higher level of integration through the transfer of powers from the national to the EU level. "The Council of Europe and the European Union: different roles, shared values." Council of Europe conventions/treaties are also open for signature to non-member states, thus facilitating equal co-operation with countries outside Europe. + +The Council of Europe's most famous achievement is the European Convention on Human Rights, which was adopted in 1950 following a report by the PACE, and followed on from the United Nations 'Universal Declaration of Human Rights' (UDHR). The Convention created the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg. The Court supervises compliance with the European Convention on Human Rights and thus functions as the highest European court. It is to this court that Europeans can bring cases if they believe that a member country has violated their fundamental rights and freedoms. + +The various activities and achievements of the Council of Europe can be found in detail on its official website. The Council of Europe works in the following areas: + + Protection of the rule of law and fostering legal co-operation through some 200 conventions and other treaties, including such leading instruments as the Convention on Cybercrime, the Convention on the Prevention of Terrorism, Conventions against Corruption and Organised Crime, the Convention on Action against Trafficking in Human Beings, and the Convention on Human Rights and Biomedicine. + CODEXTER, designed to co-ordinate counter-terrorism measures + The European Commission for the Efficiency of Justice (CEPEJ) + Protection of human rights, notably through: + the European Convention on Human Rights + the European Committee for the Prevention of Torture + the European Commission against Racism and Intolerance + the Convention on Action against Trafficking in Human Beings + the Convention for the protection of individuals with regard to automatic processing of personal data + the Convention on the Protection of Children against Sexual Exploitation and Sexual Abuse + The Convention on preventing and combating violence against women and domestic violence. + social rights under the European Social Charter + European Charter of Local Self-Government guaranteeing the political, administrative and financial independence of local authorities. + linguistic rights under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages + minority rights under the Framework Convention for the Protection of National Minorities + Media freedom under Article 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights and the European Convention on Transfrontier Television + Protection of democracy through parliamentary scrutiny and election monitoring by its Parliamentary Assembly as well as assistance in democratic reforms, in particular by the Venice Commission. + Promotion of cultural cooperation and diversity under the Council of Europe's Cultural Convention of 1954 and several conventions on the protection of cultural heritage as well as through its Centre for Modern Languages in Graz, Austria, and its North-South Centre in Lisbon, Portugal. + Promotion of the right to education under Article 2 of the first Protocol to the European Convention on Human Rights and several conventions on the recognition of university studies and diplomas (see also Bologna Process and Lisbon Recognition Convention). + Promotion of fair sport through the Anti-Doping Convention + Promotion of European youth exchanges and cooperation through European Youth Centres in Strasbourg and Budapest, Hungary. + Promotion of the quality of medicines throughout Europe by the European Directorate for the Quality of Medicines and its European Pharmacopoeia. + +Support for intercultural integration through the Intercultural Cities (ICC) program. This program offers information and advice for local authorities on the integration of minorities and the prevention of discrimination. + +Institutions + +The institutions of the Council of Europe are: + + The Secretary General, who is elected for a term of five years by the PACE and heads the Secretariat of the Council of Europe. Thorbjørn Jagland, the former Prime Minister of Norway, was elected Secretary General of the Council of Europe on 29 September 2009. In June 2014, he became the first Secretary General to be re-elected, commencing his second term in office on 1 October 2014. + The Committee of Ministers, comprising the Ministers of Foreign Affairs of all 46 member states who are represented by their Permanent Representatives and Ambassadors accredited to the Council of Europe. Committee of Ministers' presidencies are held in alphabetical order for six months following the English alphabet: Turkey 11/2010-05/2011, Ukraine 05/2011-11/2011, the United Kingdom 11/2011-05/2012, Albania 05/2012-11/2012, Andorra 11/2012-05/2013, Armenia 05/2013-11/2013, Austria 11/2013-05/2014, and so on. + + The Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE), which comprises national parliamentarians from all member states. Adopting resolutions and recommendations to governments, the Assembly holds a dialogue with its governmental counterpart, the Committee of Ministers, and is often regarded as the "motor" of the organisation. The national parliamentary delegations to the Assembly must reflect the political spectrum of their national parliament, i.e. comprise government and opposition parties. The Assembly appoints members as rapporteurs with the mandate to prepare parliamentary reports on specific subjects. The British MP Sir David Maxwell-Fyfe was rapporteur for the drafting of the European Convention on Human Rights. Dick Marty's reports on secret CIA detentions and rendition flights in Europe became quite famous in 2006 and 2007. Other Assembly reports were instrumental in, for example, the abolition of the death penalty in Europe, highlighting the political and human rights situation in Chechnya, identifying who was responsible for disappeared persons in Belarus, chronicling threats to freedom of expression in the media and many other subjects. + The Congress of the Council of Europe (Congress of Local and Regional Authorities of Europe), which was created in 1994 and comprises political representatives from local and regional authorities in all member states. The most influential instruments of the Council of Europe in this field are the European Charter of Local Self-Government of 1985 and the European Outline Convention on Transfrontier Co-operation between Territorial Communities or Authorities of 1980. + The European Court of Human Rights, created under the European Convention on Human Rights of 1950, is composed of a judge from each member state elected for a single, non-renewable term of nine years by the PACE and is headed by the elected president of the court. The current president of the court is Guido Raimondi from Italy. Under the recent Protocol No. 14 to the European Convention on Human Rights, the Court's case processing was reformed and streamlined. Ratification of Protocol No. 14 was delayed by Russia for a number of years, but won support to be passed in January 2010. + The Commissioner for Human Rights is elected by the PACE for a non-renewable term of six years since the creation of this position in 1999. Since April 2018, this position has been held by Dunja Mijatović from Bosnia and Herzegovina. + The Conference of INGOs. NGOs can participate in the INGOs Conference of the Council of Europe. Since the [Resolution (2003)8] adopted by the Committee of Ministers on 19 November 2003, they are given a "participatory status". + The Joint Council on Youth of the Council of Europe. The European Steering Committee (CDEJ) on Youth and the Advisory Council on Youth (CCJ) of the Council of Europe form together the Joint Council on Youth (CMJ). The CDEJ brings together representatives of ministries or bodies responsible for youth matters from the 50 States Parties to the European Cultural Convention. The CDEJ fosters cooperation between governments in the youth sector and provides a framework for comparing national youth policies, exchanging best practices and drafting standard-setting texts. The Advisory Council on Youth comprises 30 representatives of non-governmental youth organisations and networks. It provides opinions and input from youth NGOs on all youth sector activities and ensures that young people are involved in the council's other activities. + Information Offices of the Council of Europe in many member states. + +The CoE system also includes a number of semi-autonomous structures known as "Partial Agreements", some of which are also open to non-member states: + + The Council of Europe Development Bank in Paris + The European Directorate for the Quality of Medicines with its European Pharmacopoeia + The European Audiovisual Observatory + The European Support Fund Eurimages for the co-production and distribution of films. + The Enlarged Partial Agreement on Cultural Routes, which awards the certification "Cultural Route of the Council of Europe" to transnational networks promoting European heritage and intercultural dialogue (Luxembourg) + The Pompidou Group – Cooperation Group to Combat Drug Abuse and Illicit Trafficking in Drugs. + The European Commission for Democracy through Law, better known as the Venice Commission + The Group of States Against Corruption (GRECO) + The European and Mediterranean Major Hazards Agreement (EUR-OPA) which is a platform for cooperation between European and Southern Mediterranean countries in the field of major natural and technological disasters. + The Enlarged Partial Agreement on Sport, which is open to accession by states and sports associations. + The North-South Centre of the Council of Europe in Lisbon (Portugal) + The Centre for Modern Languages is in Graz (Austria) + +Summits +Occasionally the Council of Europe organizes summits of the heads of state and government of its member states. Four summits have been held to date with the fourth concluding on 17 May 2023. + +Headquarters and buildings + +The seat of the Council of Europe is in Strasbourg, France. First meetings were held in Strasbourg's University Palace in 1949, but the Council of Europe soon moved into its own buildings. The Council of Europe's eight main buildings are situated in the Quartier européen, an area in the northeast of Strasbourg spread over the three districts of Le Wacken, La Robertsau and Quartier de l'Orangerie, where are also located the four buildings of the seat of the European Parliament in Strasbourg, the Arte headquarters and the seat of the International Institute of Human Rights. + +Building in the area started in 1949 with the predecessor of the Palais de l'Europe, the House of Europe (demolished in 1977), and came to a provisional end in 2007 with the opening of the New General Office Building, later named "Agora", in 2008. The Palais de l'Europe (Palace of Europe) and the Art Nouveau Villa Schutzenberger (seat of the European Audiovisual Observatory) are in the Orangerie district, and the European Court of Human Rights, the EDQM and the Agora Building are in the Robertsau district. The Agora building has been voted "best international business centre real estate project of 2007" on 13 March 2008, at the MIPIM 2008. The European Youth Centre is located in the Wacken district. + +Besides its headquarters in Strasbourg, the Council of Europe is also present in other cities and countries. The Council of Europe Development Bank has its seat in Paris, the North-South Centre of the Council of Europe is established in Lisbon, Portugal, and the Centre for Modern Languages is in Graz, Austria. There are European Youth Centres in Budapest, Hungary, and in Strasbourg. The European Wergeland Centre, a new Resource Centre on education for intercultural dialogue, human rights and democratic citizenship, operated in cooperation with the Norwegian Government, opened in Oslo, Norway, in February 2009. + +The Council of Europe has external offices all over the European continent and beyond. There are four 'Programme Offices', namely in Ankara, Podgorica, Skopje, and Venice. There are also 'Council of Europe Offices' in Baku, Belgrade, Chisinau, Kyiv, Paris, Pristina, Sarajevo, Tbilisi, Tirana, and Yerevan. Bucharest has a Council of Europe Office on Cybercrime. There are also Council of Europe Offices in non-European capital cities like Rabat and Tunis. + +Additionally, there are 4 "Council of Europe Liaison Offices", this includes: + + Council of Europe Liaison Office in Brussels: The office is in charge of liaison with the European Union + Council of Europe Office in Geneva:  Permanent Delegation of the Council of Europe to the United Nations Office and other international organisations in Geneva + Council of Europe Office in Vienna: The office is in charge of liaison with the OSCE, United Nations Office, and other international organisations in Vienna + Council of Europe Office in Warsaw: The office is in charge of liaison with other international organisations and institutions in Warsaw, in particular, the Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (OSCE/ODIHR) + +Member states, observers, partners + +Eligibility + +There are two main criteria for membership: geographic (Article 4 of the Council of Europe Statute specifies that membership is open to any "European" State) and political (Article 3 of the Statute states applying for membership must accept democratic values—"Every member of the Council of Europe must accept the principles of the rule of law and the enjoyment by all persons within its jurisdiction of human rights and fundamental freedoms, and collaborate sincerely and effectively in the realisation of the aim of the Council as specified in Chapter I"). + +Since "Europe" is not defined in international law, the definition of "Europe" has been a question that has recurred during the CoE's history. Turkey was admitted in 1950, although it is a transcontinental state that lies mostly in Asia, with a smaller portion in Europe. In 1994, the PACE adopted Recommendation 1247, which said that admission to the CoE should be "in principle open only to states whose national territory lies wholly or partly in Europe"; later, however, the Assembly extended eligibility to apply and be admitted to Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Georgia. + +Member states and observers + +The Council of Europe was founded on 5 May 1949 by Belgium, Denmark, France, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Norway, Sweden and the United Kingdom. Greece and Turkey joined 3 months later. Iceland West Germany and Saarland Protectorate joined the Council of Europe as associate members in 1950. West Germany became a full member in 1951, and the Saar withdrew its application after it joined West Germany following the 1955 Saar Statute referendum. Joining later were Austria (1956), Cyprus (1961), Switzerland (1963), Malta (1965), and Portugal (1976). Spain joined in 1977, two years after the death of its dictator Francisco Franco and the Spanish transition to democracy. Next to join were Liechtenstein (1978), San Marino (1988) and Finland (1989). After the fall of Communism with the Revolutions of 1989 and the collapse of the Soviet Union, the post-Soviet states in Europe that began democratization joined: Hungary (1990), Poland (1991), Bulgaria (1992), Estonia (1993), Lithuania (1993), Slovenia (1993), the Czech Republic (1993), Slovakia (1993), Romania (1993), Andorra (1994), Latvia (1995), Moldova (1995), Albania (1995), Ukraine (1995), the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia (1995) (later renamed North Macedonia), Russia (1996, expelled 2022), Croatia (1996), Georgia (1999), Armenia (2001), Azerbaijan (2001), Bosnia and Herzegovina (2002), Serbia and Montenegro (later Serbia) (2003) and Monaco (2004). The Council now has 46 member states, with Montenegro (2007) being the latest to join.46 "Member States", Council of Europe. + +Although most Council members are predominantly Christian in heritage, there are four Muslim-majority member states: Bosnia and Herzegovina, Turkey, Albania, and Azerbaijan. + +The CoE has granted some countries a status that allows them to participate in CoE activities without being full members. There are three types of nonmember status: associate member, special guest and observer. Associate member status was created for former Axis states which had not yet regained their sovereignty since their defeat in the Second World War; as such, it is no longer used, although there have been proposals to reactivate it to permit enhanced participation by the current observer states. "Special guest" status was used as a transitional status for post-Soviet countries that wished to join the council after the fall of the Berlin Wall and is no longer commonly used. "Observer" status is for non-European nations who accept democracy, rule of law, and human rights, and wish to participate in Council initiatives. The United States became an observer state in 1995. Currently, Canada, the Holy See, Japan, Mexico, and the United States are observer states, while Israel is an observer to the PACE. + +Withdrawal, suspension, and expulsion + +The Statute of the Council of Europe provides for the voluntary suspension, involuntary suspension, and exclusion of members. Article 8 of the Statute provides that any member who has "seriously violated" Article 3 may be suspended from its rights of representation, and that the Committee of Ministers may request that such a member withdraws from the Council under Article 7. (The Statute does not define the "serious violation" phrase. Under Article 8 of the Statute, if a member state fails to withdraw upon request, the Committee may terminate its membership, in consultation with the PACE. + +The Council suspended Greece in 1967, after a military coup d'état, and the Greek junta withdrew from the CoE. Greece was readmitted to the council in 1974. + +Suspension and exclusion of Russia + +Russia became a member of the Council of Europe in 1996. In 2014, after Russia annexed Crimea from Ukraine and supported separatists in eastern Ukraine, precipitating a conflict, the Council stripped Russia of its voting rights in the PACE. In response, Russia began to boycott the Assembly in 2016, and beginning from 2017 ceased paying its annual membership dues of 32.6 million euros (US$37.1 million) to the Council placing the institution under financial strain. + +Russia stated that its suspension by the council was unfair, and demanded the restoration of its voting rights. Russia had threatened to withdraw from the Council unless its voting rights were restored in time for the election of a new secretary general. European Council secretary-general Thorbjørn Jagland organized a special committee to find a compromise with Russia in early 2018, a move that was criticized by some as giving in to alleged Russian pressure by Council members and academic observers, especially if voting sanctions were lifted. In June 2019, an approximately two-thirds majority of the Council voted (on a 118–62 vote, with 10 abstentions) to restore Russia's voting rights in the council. Opponents of lifting the suspension included Ukraine and other post-Soviet countries, such as Poland and the Baltic states, who argued that readmission amounted to normalizing Russia's malign activity. Supporters of restoring Russia's council rights included France and Germany, which argued that a Russian withdrawal from the council would be harmful because it would deprive Russian citizens of their ability to initiate cases in the European Court of Human Rights. + +On 3 March 2022, after Russia launched a full-scale military invasion of Ukraine, the council suspended Russia for violations of the council's statute and the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR). The suspension blocked Russia from participation in the council's ministerial council, the PACE, and the Council of the Baltic Sea States, but still left Russia obligated to follow the ECHR. On 15 March 2022, hours before the vote to expel the country, Russia initiated a voluntary withdrawal procedure from the council. The Russian delegation planned to deliver its formal withdrawal on 31 December 2022, and announced its intent to denounce the ECHR. However, on the same day, the council's Committee of Ministers decided Russia's membership in the council would be terminated immediately, and determined that Russia had been excluded from the Council instead under its exclusion mechanism rather than the withdrawal mechanism. After being excluded from the Council of Europe, Russia's former president and prime minister Dmitry Medvedev endorsed restoring the death penalty in Russia. + +Co-operation + +Conventions: European Treaty Series +The Council of Europe works mainly through international treaties, usually called conventions in its system. By drafting conventions or international treaties, common legal standards are set for its member states. The conventions are collected in the European Treaty Series. + +Non-member states +Several conventions have also been opened for signature to non-member states. Important examples are the Convention on Cybercrime (signed for example, by Canada, Japan, South Africa and the United States), the Lisbon Recognition Convention on the recognition of study periods and degrees (signed for example, by Australia, Belarus, Canada, the Holy See, Israel, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, New Zealand and the United States), the Anti-doping Convention (signed, for example, by Australia, Belarus, Canada and Tunisia) and the Convention on the Conservation of European Wildlife and Natural Habitats (signed for example, by Burkina Faso, Morocco, Tunisia and Senegal as well as the European Community). Non-member states also participate in several partial agreements, such as the Venice Commission, the Group of States Against Corruption (GRECO), the European Pharmacopoeia Commission and the North-South Centre. + +Invitations to sign and ratify relevant conventions of the Council of Europe on a case-by-case basis are sent to three groups of non-member entities: + Non-European states: Algeria, Argentina, Australia, Bahamas, Bolivia, Brazil, Burkina Faso, Chile, China, Colombia, Costa Rica, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, Honduras, South Korea, Kyrgyzstan, Lebanon, Malaysia, Mauritius, Morocco, New Zealand, Panama, Peru, Philippines, Senegal, South Africa, Syria, Tajikistan, Tonga, Trinidad and Tobago, Tunisia, Uruguay, Venezuela and the observers Canada, Israel, Japan, Mexico, United States. + European states: Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kosovo, Russia and the observer Vatican City. + the European Community and later the European Union after its legal personality was established by the ratification of the EU's Lisbon Treaty. + +European Union + +The Council of Europe is not to be confused with the Council of the European Union (the "Council of Ministers") or the European Council. These belong to the European Union, which is separate from the Council of Europe, although they have shared the same European flag and anthem since the 1980s since they both work for European integration. Nor is the Council of Europe to be confused with the European Union itself. + +The Council of Europe is an entirely separate body from the European Union. It is not controlled by it. + +Cooperation between the European Union and the Council of Europe was reinforced in the mid-2000s, notably on culture and education as well as on the international enforcement of justice and Human Rights. + +The European Union is expected to accede to the European Convention on Human Rights (the convention). There are also concerns about consistency in case law – the European Court of Justice (the EU's court in Luxembourg) is treating the convention as part of the legal system of all EU member states in order to prevent conflict between its judgements and those of the European Court of Human Rights (the court in Strasbourg interpreting the convention). Protocol No. 14 of the convention is designed to allow the EU to accede to it and the EU Treaty of Lisbon contains a protocol binding the EU to join. The EU would thus be subject to its human rights law and external monitoring as its member states currently are. + +Schools of Political Studies +The Council of Europe Schools of Political Studies were established to train future generations of political, economic, social and cultural leaders in countries in transition. With the participation of national and international experts, they run annual series of seminars and conferences on topics such as European integration, democracy, human rights, the rule of law and globalisation. The first School of Political Studies was created in Moscow in 1992. By 2020, 20 other schools had been set up along the same lines, forming an association; a network covering the whole of Eastern and South-Eastern Europe and the Caucasus, as well as some countries in the Southern Mediterranean region. The schools are part of the Education Department, which is part of the Directorate of Democratic Participation within the Directorate General of Democracy ("DGII") of the Council of Europe. + +United Nations +Cooperation between the CoE and the UN started with the agreement signed by the Secretariats of these institutions on 15 December 1951. On 17 October 1989, the General Assembly of the United Nations approved a resolution on granting observer status to the Council of Europe which was proposed by several member states of the CoE. Currently, the Council of Europe holds observer status with the United Nations and is regularly represented in the UN General Assembly. It has organised the regional UN conferences against racism and on women. It co-operates with the United Nations at many levels, in particular in the areas of human rights, minorities, migration and counter-terrorism. In November 2016, the UN General Assembly adopted by consensus Resolution (A/Res/71/17) on Cooperation between the United Nations and the Council of Europe whereby it acknowledged the contribution of the Council of Europe to the protection and strengthening of human rights and fundamental freedoms, democracy and the rule of law, welcomed the ongoing co-operation in a variety of fields. + +Non-governmental organisations + +Non-governmental organisations (NGOs) can participate in the INGOs Conference of the Council of Europe and become observers to inter-governmental committees of experts. The Council of Europe drafted the European Convention on the Recognition of the Legal Personality of International Non-Governmental Organisations in 1986, which sets the legal basis for the existence and work of NGOs in Europe. Article 11 of the European Convention on Human Rights protects the right to freedom of association, which is also a fundamental norm for NGOs. The rules for consultative status for INGOs appended to the resolution (93)38 "On relation between the Council of Europe and non-governmental organisations", adopted by the Committee of Ministers on 18 October 1993 at the 500th meeting of the Ministers' Deputies. On 19 November 2003, the Committee of Ministers changed the consultative status into a participatory status, "considering that it is indispensable that the rules governing the relations between the Council of Europe and NGOs evolve to reflect the active participation of international non-governmental organisations (INGOs) in the Organisation's policy and work programme". + +Others + +On 30 May 2018, the Council of Europe signed a memorandum of understanding with the European football confederation UEFA. + +The Council of Europe also signed an agreement with FIFA in which the two agreed to strengthen future cooperation in areas of common interests. The deal which included cooperation between member states in the sport of football and safety and security at football matches was finalized in October 2018. + +Characteristics + +Privileges and immunities +The General Agreement on Privileges and Immunities of the Council of Europe grants the organisation certain privileges and immunities. + +The working conditions of staff are governed by the council's staff regulations, which are public. Salaries and emoluments paid by the Council of Europe to its officials are tax-exempt on the basis of Article 18 of the General Agreement on Privileges and Immunities of the Council of Europe. + +Symbol and anthem + +The Council of Europe created, and has since 1955 used as its official symbol, the European Flag with 12 golden stars arranged in a circle on a blue background. + +Its musical anthem since 1972, the "European anthem", is based on the "Ode to Joy" theme from Ludwig van Beethoven's ninth symphony. + +On 5 May 1964, the 15th anniversary of its founding, the Council of Europe established 5 May as Europe Day. + +The wide private and public use of the European Flag is encouraged to symbolise a European dimension. To avoid confusion with the European Union which subsequently adopted the same flag in the 1980s, as well as other European institutions, the Council of Europe often uses a modified version with a lower-case "e" surrounding the stars which are referred to as the "Council of Europe Logo". + +Criticism and controversies + +The Council of Europe has been accused of not having any meaningful purpose, being superfluous in its aims to other pan-European bodies, including the European Union and OSCE. In 2013 The Economist agreed, saying that the "Council of Europe's credibility is on the line". Both Human Rights Watch and the European Stability Initiative have called on the Council of Europe to undertake concrete actions to show that it is willing and able to return to its "original mission to protect and ensure human rights". + +In October 2022, a new and different Pan-European meeting of 44 states was held, as the "inaugural summit of the European Political Community", a new forum largely organized by French President Emmanuel Macron. The Council of Europe, sidelined, reportedly was "perplexed" with this development, with a spokesperson stating "In the field of human rights, democracy and the rule of law, such a pan-European community already exists: it is the Council of Europe." A feature of the new forum is that Russia and Belarus are deliberately excluded, which was not seen as explaining the need for a different entity, given that at the time, Russia was no longer a member of the Council of Europe and Belarus only participated partially, as a non-member. + +"Caviar diplomacy" scandal + +After Azerbaijan joined the CoE in 2001, both the Council and its Parliamentary Assembly were criticized for having a weak response to election rigging and human rights violations in Azerbaijan. The Human Rights Watch criticized the Council of Europe in 2014 for allowing Azerbaijan to assume the six-month rotating chairmanship of the council's Committee of Ministers, writing that the Azeri government's repression of human rights defenders, dissidents, and journalists "shows sheer contempt for its commitments to the Council of Europe". An internal inquiry was set up in 2017 amid allegations of bribery by Azerbaijan government officials and criticism of "caviar diplomacy at the Council. A 219-page report was issued in 2018 after a ten-month investigation. It concluded that several members of the Parliamentary Assembly broke CoE ethical rules and were "strongly suspected" of corruption; it strongly criticized former Parliamentary Assembly president Pedro Agramunt and suggested that he had engaged in "corruptive activities" before his resignation under pressure in 2017. The inquiry also named Italian member Luca Volontè as a suspect in "activities of a corruptive nature". Volontè was investigated by Italian police and accused by Italian prosecutors in 2017 of receiving over 2.39 million euros in bribes in exchange for working for Azerbaijan in the parliamentary assembly, and that in 2013 he played a key role in orchestrating the defeat of a highly critical report on the abuse of political prisoners in Azerbaijan. In 2021, Volontè was convicted of accepting bribes from Azerbaijani officials to water down critiques of the nation's human rights record, and he was sentenced by a court in Milan to four years in prison. + +See also + + CAHDI + Common European Framework of Reference for Languages + Conference of Specialised Ministers + Council of Europe Archives + The Europe Prize + European Anti-fraud Office + Film Award of the Council of Europe + Moneyval + International organisations in Europe, and co-ordinated organisations + List of Council of Europe treaties + List of linguistic rights in European constitutions + North–South Centre of the Council of Europe + +Notes + +Footnotes + +References + +Further reading + + + Dinan, Desmond. Europe Recast: A History of European Union (2nd ed. 2004). excerpt ; the excerpt covers the historiography + Gillingham, John. Coal, Steel, and the Rebirth of Europe, 1945–1955: The Germans and French from Ruhr Conflict to Economic Community (Cambridge UP, 2004). + + Kopf, Susanne. Debating the European Union Transnationally: Wikipedians' Construction of the EU on a Wikipedia Talk Page (2001–2015). (PhD dissertation Lancaster University, 2018)online. + Moravcsik, Andrew. The Choice for Europe: Social Purpose and State Power from Messina to Maastricht (Cornell UP, 1998). . . + Stone, Dan. Goodbye to All That?: The Story of Europe Since 1945 (Oxford UP, 2014). + +External links + + + General Agreement on Privileges and Immunities of the Council of Europe, Paris, 2 September 1949 + + +1949 establishments in England +Councils +International organizations based in Europe +International organizations based in France +Organizations based in Strasbourg +Organizations established in 1949 +Politics of Europe +United Nations General Assembly observers +The Council of the European Union, often referred to in the treaties and other official documents simply as the Council, and informally known as the Council of Ministers, is the third of the seven Institutions of the European Union (EU) as listed in the Treaty on European Union. It is one of two legislative bodies and together with the European Parliament serves to amend and approve or veto the proposals of the European Commission, which holds the right of initiative. + +The Council of the European Union and the European Council are the only EU institutions that are explicitly intergovernmental, that is, forums whose attendees express and represent the position of their Member State's executive, be they ambassadors, ministers or heads of state/government. + +The Council meets in 10 different configurations of national ministers (one per state). The precise membership of these configurations varies according to the topic under consideration; for example, when discussing agricultural policy the Council is formed by the national ministers whose portfolio includes this policy area (with the related European Commissioners contributing but not voting). + +Composition +The Presidency of the Council rotates every six months among the governments of EU member states, with the relevant ministers of the respective country holding the Presidency at any given time ensuring the smooth running of the meetings and setting the daily agenda. The continuity between presidencies is provided by an arrangement under which three successive presidencies, known as Presidency trios, share common political programmes. The Foreign Affairs Council (national foreign ministers) is however chaired by the Union's High Representative. + +Its decisions are made by qualified majority voting in most areas, unanimity in others, or just simple majority for procedural issues. Usually where it operates unanimously, it only needs to consult the Parliament. However, in most areas the ordinary legislative procedure applies meaning both Council and Parliament share legislative and budgetary powers equally, meaning both have to agree for a proposal to pass. In a few limited areas the Council may initiate new EU law itself. + +The General Secretariat of the Council of the European Union, also known as Council Secretariat, assists the Council of the European Union, the Presidency of the Council of the European Union, the European Council and the President of the European Council. The Secretariat is headed by the Secretary-General of the Council of the European Union. The Secretariat is divided into seven directorates-general, each administered by a director-general. + +History + +The Council first appeared in the European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC) as the "Special Council of Ministers", set up to counterbalance the High Authority (the supranational executive, now the Commission). The original Council had limited powers: issues relating only to coal and steel were in the Authority's domain, and the Council's consent was only required on decisions outside coal and steel. As a whole, the Council only scrutinised the High Authority (the executive). In 1957, the Treaties of Rome established two new communities, and with them two new Councils: the Council of the European Atomic Energy Community (EAEC) and the Council of the European Economic Community (EEC). However, due to objections over the supranational power of the Authority, their Councils had more powers; the new executive bodies were known as "Commissions". + +In 1965, the Council was hit by the "empty chair crisis". Due to disagreements between French President Charles de Gaulle and the Commission's agriculture proposals, among other things, France boycotted all meetings of the Council. This halted the Council's work until the impasse was resolved the following year by the Luxembourg compromise. Although initiated by a gamble of the President of the Commission, Walter Hallstein, who later on lost the Presidency, the crisis exposed flaws in the Council's workings. + +Under the Merger Treaty of 1967, the ECSC's Special Council of Ministers and the Council of the EAEC (together with their other independent institutions) were merged into the Council of the European Communities, which would act as a single Council for all three institutions. In 1993, the Council adopted the name 'Council of the European Union', following the establishment of the European Union by the Maastricht Treaty. That treaty strengthened the Council, with the addition of more intergovernmental elements in the three pillars system. However, at the same time the Parliament and Commission had been strengthened inside the Community pillar, curtailing the ability of the Council to act independently. + +The Treaty of Lisbon abolished the pillar system and gave further powers to Parliament. It also merged the Council's High Representative with the Commission's foreign policy head, with this new figure chairing the foreign affairs Council rather than the rotating presidency. The European Council was declared a separate institution from the Council, also chaired by a permanent president, and the different Council configurations were mentioned in the treaties for the first time. + +The development of the Council has been characterised by the rise in power of the Parliament, with which the Council has had to share its legislative powers. The Parliament has often provided opposition to the Council's wishes. This has in some cases led to clashes between both bodies with the Council's system of intergovernmentalism contradicting the developing parliamentary system and supranational principles. + +Powers and functions +The primary purpose of the Council is to act as one of two vetoing bodies of the EU's legislative branch, the other being the European Parliament. Together they serve to amend, approve or disapprove the proposals of the European Commission, which has the sole power to propose laws. Jointly with the Parliament, the Council holds the budgetary power of the Union and has greater control than the Parliament over the more intergovernmental areas of the EU, such as foreign policy and macroeconomic co-ordination. Finally, before the entry into force of the Treaty of Lisbon, it formally held the executive power of the EU which it conferred upon the European Commission. It is considered by some to be equivalent to an upper house of the EU legislature, although it is not described as such in the treaties. The Council represents the executive governments of the EU's member states and is based in the Europa building in Brussels. + +Legislative procedure + +The EU's legislative authority is divided between the Council, the Parliament and the Commission. As the relationships and powers of these institutions have developed, various legislative procedures have been created for adopting laws. In early times, the avis facultatif maxim was: "The Commission proposes, and the Council disposes"; but now the vast majority of laws are subject to the ordinary legislative procedure, which works on the principle that consent from both the Council and Parliament are required before a law may be adopted. + +Under this procedure, the Commission presents a proposal to Parliament and the Council. Following its first reading the Parliament may propose amendments. If the Council accepts these amendments then the legislation is approved. If it does not then it adopts a "common position" and submits that new version to the Parliament. At its second reading, if the Parliament approves the text or does not act, the text is adopted, otherwise the Parliament may propose further amendments to the Council's proposal. It may be rejected out right by an absolute majority of MEPs. If the Council still does not approve the Parliament's position, then the text is taken to a "Conciliation Committee" composed of the Council members plus an equal number of MEPs. If a Committee manages to adopt a joint text, it then has to be approved in a third reading by both the Council and Parliament or the proposal is abandoned. + +The few other areas that operate the special legislative procedures are justice & home affairs, budget and taxation and certain aspects of other policy areas: such as the fiscal aspects of environmental policy. In these areas, the Council or Parliament decide law alone. The procedure used also depends upon which type of institutional act is being used. The strongest act is a regulation, an act or law which is directly applicable in its entirety. Then there are directives which bind members to certain goals which they must achieve, but they do this through their own laws and hence have room to manoeuvre in deciding upon them. A decision is an instrument which is focused at a particular person or group and is directly applicable. Institutions may also issue recommendations and opinions which are merely non-binding declarations. + +The Council votes in one of three ways; unanimity, simple majority, or qualified majority. In most cases, the Council votes on issues by qualified majority voting, meaning that there must be a minimum of 55% of member states agreeing (at least 15) who together represent at least 65% of the EU population. A 'blocking minority' can only be formed by at least 4 member states representing at least 35% of the EU population. + +Resolutions +Council resolutions have no legal effect. Usually the Council's intention is to set out future work foreseen in a specific policy area or to invite action by the Commission. If a resolution covers a policy area which is not entirely within an area of EU competency, the resolution will be issued as a "resolution of the Council and the representatives of the governments of the member states". Examples are the Council Resolution of 26 September 1989 on the development of subcontracting in the Community and the Council Resolution of 26 November 2001 on consumer credit and indebtedness. + +Foreign affairs + +The legal instruments used by the Council for the Common Foreign and Security Policy are different from the legislative acts. Under the CFSP they consist of "common positions", "joint actions", and "common strategies". Common positions relate to defining a European foreign policy towards a particular third-country such as the promotion of human rights and democracy in Myanmar, a region such as the stabilisation efforts in the African Great Lakes, or a certain issue such as support for the International Criminal Court. A common position, once agreed, is binding on all EU states who must follow and defend the policy, which is regularly revised. A joint action refers to a co-ordinated action of the states to deploy resources to achieve an objective, for example for mine clearing or to combat the spread of small arms. Common strategies defined an objective and commits the EUs resources to that task for four years. + +Budgetary authority +The legislative branch officially holds the Union's budgetary authority. The EU's budget (which is around 155 billion euro) is subject to a form of the ordinary legislative procedure with a single reading giving Parliament power over the entire budget (prior to 2009, its influence was limited to certain areas) on an equal footing with the Council. If there is a disagreement between them, it is taken to a conciliation committee as it is for legislative proposals. But if the joint conciliation text is not approved, the Parliament may adopt the budget definitively. In addition to the budget, the Council coordinates the economic policy of members. + +Organisation +The Council's rules of procedure contain the provisions necessary for its organisation and functioning. + +Presidency + +The Presidency of the Council is not a single post, but is held by a member state's government. Every six months the presidency rotates among the states, in an order predefined by the Council's members, allowing each state to preside over the body. From 2007, every three member states co-operate for their combined eighteen months on a common agenda, although only one formally holds the presidency for the normal six-month period. For example, the President for the second half of 2007, Portugal, was the second in a trio of states alongside Germany and Slovenia with whom Portugal had been co-operating. The Council meets in various configurations (as outlined below) so its membership changes depending upon the issue. The person chairing the Council will always be the member from the state holding the Presidency. A delegate from the following Presidency also assists the presiding member and may take over work if requested. The exception however is the foreign affairs council, which has been chaired by the High Representative since the entry into force of the Lisbon Treaty. + +The role of the Presidency is administrative and political. On the administrative side it is responsible for procedures and organising the work of the Council during its term. This includes summoning the Council for meetings along with directing the work of COREPER and other committees and working groups. The political element is the role of successfully dealing with issues and mediating in the Council. In particular this includes setting the agenda of the council, hence giving the Presidency substantial influence in the work of the Council during its term. The Presidency also plays a major role in representing the Council within the EU and representing the EU internationally, for example at the United Nations. + +Configurations +Legally speaking, the Council is a single entity (this means that technically any Council configuration can adopt decisions that fall within the remit of any other Council configuration) but it is in practice divided into several different council configurations (or ‘(con)formations’). Article 16(6) of the Treaty on European Union provides: + +Each council configuration deals with a different functional area, for example agriculture and fisheries. In this formation, the council is composed of ministers from each state government who are responsible for this area: the agriculture and fisheries ministers. The chair of this council is held by the member from the state holding the presidency (see section above). Similarly, the Economic and Financial Affairs Council is composed of national finance ministers, and they are still one per state and the chair is held by the member coming from the presiding country. The Councils meet irregularly throughout the year except for the three major configurations (top three below) which meet once a month. , there are ten formations: +General Affairs (GAC) General affairs co-ordinates the work of the Council, prepares for European Council meetings and deals with issues crossing various council formations. +Foreign Affairs (FAC) Chaired by the High Representative, rather than the Presidency, it manages the CFSP, CSDP, trade and development co-operation. It sometimes meets in a defence configuration. + +Economic and Financial Affairs (Ecofin) Composed of economics and finance ministers of the member states. It includes budgetary and eurozone matters via an informal group composed only of eurozone member ministers. +Agriculture and Fisheries (Agrifish) Composed of the agriculture and fisheries ministers of the member states. It considers matters concerning the Common Agricultural Policy, the Common Fisheries Policy, forestry, organic farming, food and feed safety, seeds, pesticides, and fisheries. +Justice and Home Affairs (JHA) This configuration brings together Justice ministers and Interior Ministers of the Member States. Includes civil protection. +Employment, Social Policy, Health and Consumer Affairs (EPSCO) Composed of employment, social protection, consumer protection, health and equal opportunities ministers. +Competitiveness (COMPET) Created in June 2002 through the merging of three previous configurations (Internal Market, Industry and Research). Depending on the items on the agenda, this formation is composed of ministers responsible for areas such as European affairs, industry, tourism and scientific research. With the entry into force of the Lisbon Treaty, the EU acquired competence in space matters, and space policy has been attributed to the Competitiveness Council. +Transport, Telecommunications and Energy (TTE) Created in June 2002, through the merging of three policies under one configuration, and with a composition varying according to the specific items on its agenda. This formation meets approximately once every two months. +Environment (ENV) Composed of environment ministers, who meet about four times a year. +Education, Youth, Culture and Sport (EYC) Composed of education, culture, youth, communications and sport ministers, who meet around three or four times a year. Includes audiovisual issues. + +Complementing these, the Political and Security Committee (PSC) brings together ambassadors to monitor international situations and define policies within the CSDP, particularly in crises. The European Council is similar to a configuration of the Council and operates in a similar way, but is composed of the national leaders (heads of government or state) and has its own President, since 2019, Charles Michel. The body's purpose is to define the general "impetus" of the Union. The European Council deals with the major issues such as the appointment of the President of the European Commission who takes part in the body's meetings. + +Ecofin's Eurozone component, the Euro group, is also a formal group with its own President. Its European Council counterpart is the Euro summit formalized in 2011 and the TSCG. + +Following the entry into force of a framework agreement between the EU and ESA there is a Space Council configuration—a joint and concomitant meeting of the EU Council and of the ESA Council at ministerial level dealing with the implementation of the ESP adopted by both organisations. + +Administration + +The General Secretariat of the Council provides the continuous infrastructure of the Council, carrying out preparation for meetings, draft reports, translation, records, documents, agendas and assisting the presidency. The Secretary General of the Council is head of the Secretariat. The Secretariat is divided into seven directorates-general, each administered by a director-general. + +The Committee of Permanent Representatives (COREPER) is a body composed of representatives from the states (ambassadors, civil servants etc.) who meet each week to prepare the work and tasks of the Council. It monitors and co-ordinates work and deals with the Parliament on co-decision legislation. It is divided into two groups of the representatives (Coreper II) and their deputies (Coreper I). Agriculture is dealt with separately by the Special Committee on Agriculture (SCA). The numerous working groups submit their reports to the Council through Coreper or SCA. + +Governments represented in the Council + +The Treaty of Lisbon mandated a change in voting system from 1 November 2014 for most cases to double majority Qualified Majority Voting, replacing the voting weights system. Decisions made by the council have to be taken by 55% of member states representing at least 65% of the EU's population. + +Almost all members of the Council are members of a political party at national level, and most of these are members of a European-level political party. However the Council is composed to represent the Member States rather than political parties and the nature of coalition governments in a number of states means that party breakdown at different configuration of the Council vary depending on which domestic party was assigned the portfolio. However, the broad ideological alignment of the government in each state does influence the nature of the law the Council produces and the extent to which the link between domestic parties puts pressure on the members in the European Parliament to vote a certain way. + +Location + +By a decision of the European Council at Edinburgh in December 1992, the Council has its seat in Brussels but in April, June, and October, it holds its meetings in Luxembourg City. Between 1952 and 1967, the ECSC Council held its Luxembourg City meetings in the Cercle Municipal on Place d’Armes. Its secretariat moved on numerous occasions but between 1955 and 1967 it was housed in the Verlorenkost district of the city. In 1957, with the creation of two new Communities with their own Councils, discretion on location was given to the current Presidency. In practice this was to be in the Château of Val-Duchesse until the autumn of 1958, at which point it moved to 2 Rue Ravensteinstraat in Brussels. + +The 1965 agreement (finalised by the Edinburgh agreement and annexed to the treaties) on the location of the newly merged institutions, the Council was to be in Brussels but would meet in Luxembourg City during April, June, and October. The ECSC secretariat moved from Luxembourg City to the merged body Council secretariat in the Ravenstein building of Brussels. In 1971 the Council and its secretariat moved into the Charlemagne building, next to the Commission's Berlaymont, but the Council rapidly ran out of space and administrative branch of the Secretariat moved to a building at 76 Rue Joseph II/Jozef II-straat and during the 1980s the language divisions moved out into the Nerviens, Frère Orban, and Guimard buildings. + +In 1995, the Council moved into the Justus Lipsius building, across the road from Charlemagne. However, its staff was still increasing, so it continued to rent the Frère Orban building to house the Finnish and Swedish language divisions. Staff continued to increase and the Council rented, in addition to owning Justus Lipsius, the Kortenberg, Froissart, Espace Rolin, and Woluwe Heights buildings. Since acquiring the Lex building in 2008, the three aforementioned buildings are no longer in use by the Council services. + +When the Council is meeting in Luxembourg City, it meets in the Kirchberg Conference Centre, and its offices are based at the European Centre on the plateau du Kirchberg. The Council has also met occasionally in Strasbourg, in various other cities, and also outside the Union: for example in 1974 when it met in Tokyo and Washington, D. C. while trade and energy talks were taking place. Under the Council's present rules of procedures the Council can, in extraordinary circumstances, hold one of its meetings outside Brussels and Luxembourg. + +From 2017, both the Council of the European Union and the European Council adopted the purpose built Europa building as their official headquarters, although they continue to utilise the facilities afforded by the adjacent Justus Lipsius building. The focal point of the new building, the distinctive multi-storey "lantern" shaped structure in which the main meeting room is located, is utilised in both EU institutions' new official logos. + +See also + Comparisons with other institutions + +Notes + +References + +External links + + Official Council website – Europa + About the Council + Council configurations + Live broadcast + PRADO – The Council of the European Union Public Register of Authentic Travel and ID Documents Online + Access to documents of the EU Council on EUR-Lex + Council of the European Union – European NAvigator + Archival material concerning the Council of the European Union can be consulted at the Historical Archives of the European Union in Florence + + +Institutions of the European Union +Supranational legislatures +Organisations based in Brussels +Politics of the European Union +Intergovernmental organizations +International organisations based in Belgium +Continental Europe or mainland Europe is the contiguous mainland of Europe, excluding its surrounding islands. It can also be referred to ambiguously as the European continent, – which can conversely mean the whole of Europe – and, by some, simply as the Continent. When Eurasia is regarded as a single continent, Europe is treated both as a continent and subcontinent. + +Usage +The continental territory of the historical Carolingian Empire was one of the many old cultural concepts used for mainland Europe. This was consciously invoked in the 1950s as one of the basis for the prospective European integration (see also multi-speed Europe) + +The most common definition of mainland Europe excludes these continental islands: the Greek islands, Cyprus, Malta, Sicily, Sardinia, Corsica, the Balearic Islands, Great Britain and Ireland and surrounding islands, Novaya Zemlya and the Nordic archipelago, as well as nearby oceanic islands, including the Canary Islands, Madeira, the Azores, Iceland, the Faroe Islands, and Svalbard. + +The Scandinavian Peninsula is sometimes also excluded as, even though it is a part of "mainland Europe", the de facto connections to the rest of the continent are across the Baltic Sea or North Sea (rather than via the lengthy land route that involves travelling to the north of the peninsula where it meets Finland, and then south through northeast Europe). + +Great Britain and Ireland +In both Great Britain and Ireland, the Continent is widely and generally used to refer to the mainland of Europe. An amusing British newspaper headline supposedly once read, "Fog in Channel; Continent Cut Off". It has also been claimed that this was a regular weather forecast in Britain in the 1930s. In addition, the word Europe itself is also regularly used to mean Europe excluding the islands of Great Britain, Iceland, and Ireland (although the term is often used to refer to the European Union). The term mainland Europe is also sometimes used. Usage of these terms may reflect political or cultural allegiances, for example it has been observed that there is a correlation between whether a British citizen considers themselves "British" or "European" and whether they live in an area which primarily supported Brexit. + +Derivatively, the adjective continental refers to the social practices or fashion of continental Europe. Examples include breakfast, topless sunbathing and, historically, long-range driving (before Britain had motorways) often known as Grand Touring. Differences include electrical plugs, time zones for the most part, the use of left-hand traffic, and for the United Kingdom, currency and the continued use of certain imperial units alongside the metric units which have long since displaced customary units in continental Europe. + +Britain is physically connected to continental Europe through the undersea Channel Tunnel (the longest undersea tunnel in the world), which accommodates both the Eurotunnel Shuttle (passenger and vehicle use – vehicle required) and Eurostar (passenger use only) services. These services were established to transport passengers and vehicles through the tunnel on a 24/7 basis between England and continental Europe, while still maintaining passport and immigration control measures on both sides of the tunnel. This route is popular with refugees and migrants seeking to enter the UK. + +Scandinavia + +Especially in Germanic studies, continental refers to the European continent excluding the Scandinavian Peninsula, Britain, Ireland, and Iceland. The reason for this is that although the Scandinavian peninsula is attached to continental Europe, and accessible via a land route along the 66th parallel north, it is usually reached by sea. + + ("the Continent") is a vernacular Swedish expression that refers to an area excluding Sweden, Norway, and Finland but including Denmark (even the Danish Archipelago which is technically not a part of continental Europe) and the rest of continental Europe. In Norway, similarly, one speaks about as a separate entity. In Denmark, Jutland is referred to as the mainland and thereby a part of continental Europe. + +The Scandinavian Peninsula is now connected to the Danish mainland (the Jutland Peninsula) by several bridges and tunnels. + +Mediterranean and Atlantic islands +The Continent may sometimes refer to the continental part of France (excluding Corsica and overseas France), the continental part of Greece (excluding the Aegean Islands, Crete, and the Ionian Islands), the continental part of Italy (excluding Sardinia, Sicily, etc.), the continental part of Portugal (excluding the Azores and Madeira), and the continental part of Spain (excluding the Balearic Islands, the Canary Islands, the plazas de soberanía, etc.). The term is used from the perspective of the island residents of each country to describe the continental portion of their country or the continent (or mainland) as a whole. + +Continental France is also known as l'Hexagone, "the Hexagon", referring to its approximate shape on a map. Continental Spain is referred to as peninsular Spain. + +See also + Contiguous United States + Continental philosophy + Geographical midpoint of Europe + Hajnal line + Mainland + Mainland Australia + Mainland China + Mainland Finland + Mainland Tanzania + Regions of Europe + +References + +Regions of Europe +Political geography +Category theory is a general theory of mathematical structures and their relations that was introduced by Samuel Eilenberg and Saunders Mac Lane in the middle of the 20th century in their foundational work on algebraic topology. Category theory is used in almost all areas of mathematics. In particular, numerous constructions of new mathematical objects from previous ones that appear similarly in several contexts are conveniently expressed and unified in terms of categories. Examples include quotient spaces, direct products, completion, and duality. + +Many areas of computer science also rely on category theory, such as functional programming and semantics. + +A category is formed by two sorts of objects: the objects of the category, and the morphisms, which relate two objects called the source and the target of the morphism. One often says that a morphism is an arrow that maps its source to its target. Morphisms can be composed if the target of the first morphism equals the source of the second one, and morphism composition has similar properties as function composition (associativity and existence of identity morphisms). Morphisms are often some sort of function, but this is not always the case. For example, a monoid may be viewed as a category with a single object, whose morphisms are the elements of the monoid. + +The second fundamental concept of category theory is the concept of a functor, which plays the role of a morphism between two categories and it maps objects of to objects of and morphisms of to morphisms of in such a way that sources are mapped to sources and targets are mapped to targets (or, in the case of a contravariant functor, sources are mapped to targets and vice-versa). A third fundamental concept is a natural transformation that may be viewed as a morphism of functors. + +Categories, objects, and morphisms + +Categories +A category C consists of the following three mathematical entities: + A class ob(C), whose elements are called objects; + A class hom(C), whose elements are called morphisms or maps or arrows. Each morphism f has a source object a and target object b. The expression , would be verbally stated as "f is a morphism from a to b".The expression – alternatively expressed as , , or – denotes the hom-class of all morphisms from a to b. + A binary operation ∘, called composition of morphisms, such that for any three objects a, b, and c, we have +. +The composition of and is written as or gf, governed by two axioms: +1. Associativity: If , , and then + +2. Identity: For every object x, there exists a morphism (also denoted as ) called the identity morphism for x, such that +for every morphism , we have + + From the axioms, it can be proved that there is exactly one identity morphism for every object. + +Morphisms +Relations among morphisms (such as ) are often depicted using commutative diagrams, with "points" (corners) representing objects and "arrows" representing morphisms. + +Morphisms can have any of the following properties. A morphism is a: + monomorphism (or monic) if implies for all morphisms . + epimorphism (or epic) if implies for all morphisms . + bimorphism if f is both epic and monic. + isomorphism if there exists a morphism such that . + endomorphism if . end(a) denotes the class of endomorphisms of a. + automorphism if f is both an endomorphism and an isomorphism. aut(a) denotes the class of automorphisms of a. + retraction if a right inverse of f exists, i.e. if there exists a morphism with . + section if a left inverse of f exists, i.e. if there exists a morphism with . + +Every retraction is an epimorphism, and every section is a monomorphism. Furthermore, the following three statements are equivalent: + f is a monomorphism and a retraction; + f is an epimorphism and a section; + f is an isomorphism. + +Functors + +Functors are structure-preserving maps between categories. They can be thought of as morphisms in the category of all (small) categories. + +A (covariant) functor F from a category C to a category D, written , consists of: + for each object x in C, an object F(x) in D; and + for each morphism in C, a morphism in D, + +such that the following two properties hold: + For every object x in C, ; + For all morphisms and , . + +A contravariant functor is like a covariant functor, except that it "turns morphisms around" ("reverses all the arrows"). More specifically, every morphism in C must be assigned to a morphism in D. In other words, a contravariant functor acts as a covariant functor from the opposite category Cop to D. + +Natural transformations + +A natural transformation is a relation between two functors. Functors often describe "natural constructions" and natural transformations then describe "natural homomorphisms" between two such constructions. Sometimes two quite different constructions yield "the same" result; this is expressed by a natural isomorphism between the two functors. + +If F and G are (covariant) functors between the categories C and D, then a natural transformation η from F to G associates to every object X in C a morphism in D such that for every morphism in C, we have ; this means that the following diagram is commutative: + +The two functors F and G are called naturally isomorphic if there exists a natural transformation from F to G such that ηX is an isomorphism for every object X in C. + +Other concepts + +Universal constructions, limits, and colimits + +Using the language of category theory, many areas of mathematical study can be categorized. Categories include sets, groups and topologies. + +Each category is distinguished by properties that all its objects have in common, such as the empty set or the product of two topologies, yet in the definition of a category, objects are considered atomic, i.e., we do not know whether an object A is a set, a topology, or any other abstract concept. Hence, the challenge is to define special objects without referring to the internal structure of those objects. To define the empty set without referring to elements, or the product topology without referring to open sets, one can characterize these objects in terms of their relations to other objects, as given by the morphisms of the respective categories. Thus, the task is to find universal properties that uniquely determine the objects of interest. + +Numerous important constructions can be described in a purely categorical way if the category limit can be developed and dualized to yield the notion of a colimit. + +Equivalent categories + +It is a natural question to ask: under which conditions can two categories be considered essentially the same, in the sense that theorems about one category can readily be transformed into theorems about the other category? The major tool one employs to describe such a situation is called equivalence of categories, which is given by appropriate functors between two categories. Categorical equivalence has found numerous applications in mathematics. + +Further concepts and results +The definitions of categories and functors provide only the very basics of categorical algebra; additional important topics are listed below. Although there are strong interrelations between all of these topics, the given order can be considered as a guideline for further reading. + The functor category DC has as objects the functors from C to D and as morphisms the natural transformations of such functors. The Yoneda lemma is one of the most famous basic results of category theory; it describes representable functors in functor categories. + Duality: Every statement, theorem, or definition in category theory has a dual which is essentially obtained by "reversing all the arrows". If one statement is true in a category C then its dual is true in the dual category Cop. This duality, which is transparent at the level of category theory, is often obscured in applications and can lead to surprising relationships. + Adjoint functors: A functor can be left (or right) adjoint to another functor that maps in the opposite direction. Such a pair of adjoint functors typically arises from a construction defined by a universal property; this can be seen as a more abstract and powerful view on universal properties. + +Higher-dimensional categories + +Many of the above concepts, especially equivalence of categories, adjoint functor pairs, and functor categories, can be situated into the context of higher-dimensional categories. Briefly, if we consider a morphism between two objects as a "process taking us from one object to another", then higher-dimensional categories allow us to profitably generalize this by considering "higher-dimensional processes". + +For example, a (strict) 2-category is a category together with "morphisms between morphisms", i.e., processes which allow us to transform one morphism into another. We can then "compose" these "bimorphisms" both horizontally and vertically, and we require a 2-dimensional "exchange law" to hold, relating the two composition laws. In this context, the standard example is Cat, the 2-category of all (small) categories, and in this example, bimorphisms of morphisms are simply natural transformations of morphisms in the usual sense. Another basic example is to consider a 2-category with a single object; these are essentially monoidal categories. Bicategories are a weaker notion of 2-dimensional categories in which the composition of morphisms is not strictly associative, but only associative "up to" an isomorphism. + +This process can be extended for all natural numbers n, and these are called n-categories. There is even a notion of ω-category corresponding to the ordinal number ω. + +Higher-dimensional categories are part of the broader mathematical field of higher-dimensional algebra, a concept introduced by Ronald Brown. For a conversational introduction to these ideas, see John Baez, 'A Tale of n-categories' (1996). + +Historical notes + +Whilst specific examples of functors and natural transformations had been given by Samuel Eilenberg and Saunders Mac Lane in a 1942 paper on group theory, these concepts were introduced in a more general sense, together with the additional notion of categories, in a 1945 paper by the same authors (who discussed applications of category theory to the field of algebraic topology). Their work was an important part of the transition from intuitive and geometric homology to homological algebra, Eilenberg and Mac Lane later writing that their goal was to understand natural transformations, which first required the definition of functors, then categories. + +Stanislaw Ulam, and some writing on his behalf, have claimed that related ideas were current in the late 1930s in Poland. Eilenberg was Polish, and studied mathematics in Poland in the 1930s. Category theory is also, in some sense, a continuation of the work of Emmy Noether (one of Mac Lane's teachers) in formalizing abstract processes; Noether realized that understanding a type of mathematical structure requires understanding the processes that preserve that structure (homomorphisms). Eilenberg and Mac Lane introduced categories for understanding and formalizing the processes (functors) that relate topological structures to algebraic structures (topological invariants) that characterize them. + +Category theory was originally introduced for the need of homological algebra, and widely extended for the need of modern algebraic geometry (scheme theory). Category theory may be viewed as an extension of universal algebra, as the latter studies algebraic structures, and the former applies to any kind of mathematical structure and studies also the relationships between structures of different nature. For this reason, it is used throughout mathematics. Applications to mathematical logic and semantics (categorical abstract machine) came later. + +Certain categories called topoi (singular topos) can even serve as an alternative to axiomatic set theory as a foundation of mathematics. A topos can also be considered as a specific type of category with two additional topos axioms. These foundational applications of category theory have been worked out in fair detail as a basis for, and justification of, constructive mathematics. Topos theory is a form of abstract sheaf theory, with geometric origins, and leads to ideas such as pointless topology. + +Categorical logic is now a well-defined field based on type theory for intuitionistic logics, with applications in functional programming and domain theory, where a cartesian closed category is taken as a non-syntactic description of a lambda calculus. At the very least, category theoretic language clarifies what exactly these related areas have in common (in some abstract sense). + +Category theory has been applied in other fields as well. For example, John Baez has shown a link between Feynman diagrams in physics and monoidal categories. Another application of category theory, more specifically: topos theory, has been made in mathematical music theory, see for example the book The Topos of Music, Geometric Logic of Concepts, Theory, and Performance by Guerino Mazzola. + +More recent efforts to introduce undergraduates to categories as a foundation for mathematics include those of William Lawvere and Rosebrugh (2003) and Lawvere and Stephen Schanuel (1997) and Mirroslav Yotov (2012). + +See also + + Domain theory + Enriched category theory + Glossary of category theory + Group theory + Higher category theory + Higher-dimensional algebra + Important publications in category theory + Lambda calculus + Outline of category theory + Timeline of category theory and related mathematics + +Notes + +References + +Citations + +Sources + + . + . + + + + + . + + + + + + + + + + + + + + Notes for a course offered as part of the MSc. in Mathematical Logic, Manchester University. + , draft of a book. + + Based on . + +Further reading + +External links + + Theory and Application of Categories, an electronic journal of category theory, full text, free, since 1995. + nLab, a wiki project on mathematics, physics and philosophy with emphasis on the n-categorical point of view. + The n-Category Café, essentially a colloquium on topics in category theory. + Category Theory, a web page of links to lecture notes and freely available books on category theory. + , a formal introduction to category theory. + + , with an extensive bibliography. + List of academic conferences on category theory + — An informal introduction to higher order categories. + WildCats is a category theory package for Mathematica. Manipulation and visualization of objects, morphisms, categories, functors, natural transformations, universal properties. + , a channel about category theory. + . + Video archive of recorded talks relevant to categories, logic and the foundations of physics. + Interactive Web page which generates examples of categorical constructions in the category of finite sets. + Category Theory for the Sciences, an instruction on category theory as a tool throughout the sciences. + Category Theory for Programmers A book in blog form explaining category theory for computer programmers. + Introduction to category theory. + + +Higher category theory +Foundations of mathematics +Bradycardia (also sinus bradycardia) is a slow resting heart rate, commonly under 60 beats per minute (BPM) as determined by an electrocardiogram. It is considered to be a normal heart rate during sleep, in young and healthy or elderly adults, and in athletes. + +In some people, bradycardia below 60 BPM may be associated with fatigue, weakness, dizziness, sweating, and fainting. The term "relative bradycardia" is used to refer to a heart rate slower than an individual's typical resting heart rate. Athletes may have athletic heart syndrome, which includes bradycardia as part of the cardiovascular adaptations to training and participation. + +The word "bradycardia" is from the Greek βραδύς bradys "slow", and καρδία kardia "heart". + +Classification + +Sinus +Atrial bradycardias are divided into three types. The first, respiratory sinus arrhythmia, is usually found in young and healthy adults. Heart rate increases during inhalation and decreases during exhalation. This is thought to be caused by changes in the vagal tone during respiration. + +Sinus bradycardia is a sinus rhythm of less than 60 BPM. It is a common condition found in both healthy individuals and those considered well-conditioned athletes. Studies have found that 50–85% of conditioned athletes have benign sinus bradycardia, as compared to 23% of the general population studied. The heart muscle of athletes has a higher stroke volume, so requires fewer contractions to circulate the same volume of blood. + +The third, sick sinus syndrome, covers conditions that include severe sinus bradycardia, sinoatrial block, sinus arrest, and bradycardia-tachycardia syndrome (atrial fibrillation, atrial flutter, and paroxysmal supraventricular tachycardia). + +Atrioventricular junction +An AV-junctional rhythm, or atrioventricular nodal bradycardia, is usually caused by the absence of the electrical impulse from the sinus node. This usually appears on an electrocardiogram (ECG) with a normal QRS complex accompanied with an inverted P wave either before, during, or after the QRS complex. + +An AV-junctional escape beat is a delayed heartbeat originating from an ectopic focus somewhere in the AV junction. It occurs when the rate of depolarization of the SA node falls below the rate of the AV node. This dysrhythmia also may occur when the electrical impulses from the SA node fail to reach the AV node because of SA or AV block. This is a protective mechanism for the heart, to compensate for an SA node that is no longer handling the pacemaking activity and is one of a series of backup sites that can take over pacemaker function when the SA node fails to do so. This would present with a longer PR interval. An AV-junctional escape complex is a normal response that may result from excessive vagal tone on the SA node. Pathological causes include sinus bradycardia, sinus arrest, sinus exit block, or AV block. + +Ventricular +Idioventricular rhythm, also known as atrioventricular bradycardia or ventricular escape rhythm, is a heart rate of less than 50 BPM. This is a safety mechanism when a lack of electrical impulse or stimuli from the atrium occurs. Impulses originating within or below the bundle of His in the AV node will produce a wide QRS complex with heart rates between 20 and 40 BPM. Those above the bundle of His, also known as junctional, will typically range between 40 and 60 BPM with a narrow QRS complex. In a third-degree heart block, about 61% take place at the bundle branch-Purkinje system, 21% at the AV node, and 15% at the bundle of His. AV block may be ruled out with an ECG indicating "a 1:1 relationship between P waves and QRS complexes." Ventricular bradycardias occurs with sinus bradycardia, sinus arrest, and AV block. Treatment often consists of the administration of atropine and cardiac pacing. + +Infantile +For infants, bradycardia is defined as a heart rate less than 100 BPM (normal is around 120–160 BPM). Premature babies are more likely than full-term babies to have apnea and bradycardia spells; their cause is not clearly understood. The spells may be related to centers inside the brain that regulate breathing which may not be fully developed. Touching the baby gently or rocking the incubator slightly will almost always get the baby to start breathing again, which increases the heart rate. Medications (theophylline or caffeine) can be used to treat these spells in babies if necessary. Neonatal intensive-care unit (NICU) standard practice is to electronically monitor the heart and lungs for this reason. + +Causes +Bradycardia arrhythmia may have many causes, both cardiac and non-cardiac. + +Non-cardiac causes are usually secondary, and can involve recreational drug use or abuse, metabolic or endocrine issues, especially hypothyroidism, an electrolyte imbalance, neurological factors, autonomic reflexes, situational factors, such as prolonged bed rest, and autoimmunity. At rest, although tachycardia is more commonly seen in fatty acid oxidation disorders, more rarely acute bradycardia can occur. + +Cardiac causes include acute or chronic ischemic heart disease, vascular heart disease, valvular heart disease, or degenerative primary electrical disease. Ultimately, the causes act by three mechanisms: depressed automaticity of the heart, conduction block, or escape pacemakers and rhythms. + +In general, two types of problems result in bradycardias: disorders of the SA node, and disorders of the AV node. + +With SA node dysfunction (sometimes called sick sinus syndrome), there may be disordered automaticity or impaired conduction of the impulse from the SA node into the surrounding atrial tissue (an "exit block"). Second-degree sinoatrial blocks can be detected only by use of a 12-lead ECG. It is difficult and sometimes impossible to assign a mechanism to any particular bradycardia, but the underlying mechanism is not clinically relevant to treatment, which is the same in both cases of sick sinus syndrome: a permanent pacemaker. + +AV conduction disturbances (AV block; primary AV block, secondary type I AV block, secondary type II AV block, tertiary AV block) may result from impaired conduction in the AV node, or anywhere below it, such as in the bundle of His. The clinical relevance pertaining to AV blocks is greater than that of SA blocks. + +Beta blocker medicines also can slow the heart rate and decrease how forcefully the heart contracts. Beta-blockers may slow the heart rate to a dangerous level if prescribed with calcium channel blocker-type medications. Bradycardia is also part of the mammalian diving reflex. + +Diagnosis +A diagnosis of bradycardia in adults is based on a heart rate less than 60 BPM, although some studies use a heart rate of less than 50 BPM. This is determined usually either by palpation or ECG. If symptoms occur, a determination of electrolytes may be helpful in determining the underlying cause. + +Management +The treatment of bradycardia is dependent on whether or not the person is stable or unstable. + +Stable +Emergency treatment is not needed if the person is asymptomatic or minimally symptomatic. + +Unstable +If a person is unstable, the initial recommended treatment is intravenous atropine. Doses less than 0.5 mg should not be used, as this may further decrease the rate. If this is not effective, intravenous inotrope infusion (dopamine, epinephrine) or transcutaneous pacing should be used. Transvenous pacing may be required if the cause of the bradycardia is not rapidly reversible. + +In children, giving oxygen, supporting their breathing, and chest compressions are recommended. + +Epidemiology + +In clinical practice, elderly people over age 65 and young athletes of both sexes may have sinus bradycardia. The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported in 2011 that 15.2% of adult males and 6.9% of adult females had clinically-defined bradycardia (a resting pulse rate below 60 BPM). + +Society and culture + +Records + Daniel Green holds the world record for the slowest heartbeat in a healthy human, with a heart rate measured in 2014 of 26 BPM. + Martin Brady holds the Guinness world record for the slowest heart rate with a certified rate over a minute duration of 27 BPM. + Professional cyclist Miguel Indurain had, during his career, a resting heart rate of 28 BPM. + +See also + +References + +Cardiac arrhythmia +Symptoms and signs: Cardiac +Canada Day (, ), formerly known as Dominion Day (), is the national day of Canada. A federal statutory holiday, it celebrates the anniversary of Canadian Confederation which occurred on July 1, 1867, with the passing of the British North America Act, 1867, when the three separate colonies of the United Canadas, Nova Scotia, and New Brunswick were united into a single dominion within the British Empire called Canada. + +Originally called Dominion Day (), the holiday was renamed in 1982, the same year that the Canadian constitution was patriated by the Canada Act, 1982, which severed the vestiges of legal dependence on the Parliament of the United Kingdom. Canada Day celebrations take place throughout the country, as well as in various locations around the world attended by Canadians living abroad. + +Commemoration +Canada Day is often informally referred to as "Canada's birthday", particularly in the popular press. However, the term "birthday" can be seen as an oversimplification, as Canada Day is the anniversary of only one important national milestone on the way to the country's full sovereignty, namely the joining on July 1, 1867, of the colonies of Canada (divided into Ontario and Quebec), Nova Scotia, and New Brunswick into a wider British federation of four provinces. Canada became a "kingdom in its own right" within the British Empire, commonly known as the Dominion of Canada. + +Although a British dominion, Canada gained an increased level of political control and governance over its own affairs, the British parliament and cabinet maintaining political control over certain areas, such as foreign affairs, national defence, and constitutional changes. Canada gradually gained increasing sovereignty over the years—notably with the passage of the Statute of Westminster in 1931—until finally becoming completely sovereign with the passing of the Constitution Act, 1982, which served to fully patriate the Canadian constitution. + +Under the federal Holidays Act, Canada Day is observed on July 1, unless that date falls on a Sunday, in which case July 2 is the statutory holiday. Celebratory events will generally still take place on July 1, even though it is not the legal holiday. If it falls on a weekend, businesses normally closed that day will usually dedicate the following Monday as a day off. + +History + +The enactment of the British North America Act, 1867 (today called the Constitution Act, 1867), which confederated Canada, was celebrated on July 1, 1867, with the ringing of the bells at the Cathedral Church of St James in Toronto and "bonfires, fireworks, and illuminations, excursions, military displays, and musical and other entertainments", as described in contemporary accounts. On June 20 of the following year, Governor General the Viscount Monck issued a royal proclamation asking for Canadians to celebrate the anniversary of Confederation, However, the holiday was not established statutorily until May 15, 1879, when it was designated as Dominion Day, alluding to the reference in the British North America Act to the country as a dominion. The holiday was initially not dominant in the national calendar; any celebrations were mounted by local communities and the governor general hosted a party at Rideau Hall. No larger celebrations were held until 1917, and then none again for a further decade—the gold and diamond anniversaries of Confederation, respectively. + +In 1946, Philéas Côté, a Quebec member of the House of Commons, introduced a private member's bill to rename Dominion Day as Canada Day. The bill was passed quickly by the lower chamber but was stalled by the Senate, which returned it to the commons with the recommendation that the holiday be renamed The National Holiday of Canada, an amendment that effectively killed the bill. + +The Canadian government began in 1958 to orchestrate Dominion Day celebrations. That year, then-Prime Minister John Diefenbaker requested that Secretary of State Ellen Fairclough organize appropriate events, with a budget of $14,000. Parliament was traditionally in session on July 1, but Fairclough persuaded Diefenbaker and the rest of the federal cabinet to attend. Official celebrations thereafter consisted usually of trooping the colour ceremonies on Parliament Hill in the afternoon and evening, followed by a mass band concert and fireworks display. Fairclough, who became Minister of Citizenship and Immigration, later expanded the bills to include performing folk and ethnic groups. The day also became more casual and family oriented. + +Canada's centennial in 1967 is often seen as an important milestone in the history of Canadian nationalism and in Canada's maturing as a distinct, independent country, after which Dominion Day became more popular with average Canadians. Into the late 1960s, nationally televised, multi-cultural concerts held in Ottawa were added and the fête became known as Festival Canada. After 1980, the Canadian government began to promote celebrating Dominion Day beyond the national capital, giving grants and aid to cities across the country to help fund local activities. + +Some Canadians were, by the early 1980s, informally referring to the holiday as Canada Day, a practice that caused some controversy: Proponents argued that the name Dominion Day was a holdover from the colonial era—an argument given some impetus by the patriation of the Canadian constitution in 1982—and others asserted that an alternative was needed as the term does not translate well into French. Conversely, numerous politicians, journalists, and authors, such as Robertson Davies, decried the change at the time and some continue to maintain that it was illegitimate and an unnecessary break with tradition. Others claimed dominion was widely misunderstood and conservatively inclined commenters saw the change as part of a much larger attempt by Liberals to "re-brand" or re-define Canadian history. Columnist Andrew Cohen called Canada Day a term of "crushing banality" and criticized it as "a renunciation of the past [and] a misreading of history, laden with political correctness and historical ignorance". + +The holiday was officially renamed as a result of a private member's bill that was passed through the House of Commons on July 9, 1982, two years after its first reading. Only 12 members of parliament were present when the bill was taken up again, 8 fewer than the necessary quorum; however, according to parliamentary rules, the quorum is enforceable only at the start of a sitting or when a member calls attention to it. The group passed the bill in five minutes, without debate, inspiring "grumblings about the underhandedness of the process". It met with stronger resistance in the Senate. Ernest Manning argued that the rationale for the change was based on a misperception of the name and George McIlraith did not agree with the manner in which the bill was passed, urging the government to proceed in a more "dignified way". However, the Senate did eventually pass the bill, regardless. With the granting of royal assent, the holiday's name was officially changed to Canada Day on October 27, 1982, and first celebrated under that name July 1, 1983. + +As the anniversary of Confederation, Dominion Day, and later Canada Day, was the date set for a number of important events, such as the first national radio network hookup by the Canadian National Railway (1927); the inauguration of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation's cross-country television broadcast, with Governor General Vincent Massey's Dominion Day speech from Parliament Hill (1958); the flooding of the Saint Lawrence Seaway (1958); the first colour television transmission in Canada (1966); the inauguration of the Order of Canada (1967); and the establishment of "O Canada" as the country's national anthem (1980). During the Canada's sesquicentennial in 2017, the Bank of Canada released a commemorative $10 banknote, which was expected to be broadly available by Canada Day. + +The COVID-19 pandemic led to the cancellation in 2020 of all in-person Canada Day festivities nationwide, due to social distancing and restrictions on public gatherings. Some were converted to virtual events. The same cancellations occurred the following year; though, some also for political reasons. In-person festivities in Ottawa returned in 2022, being re-located from Parliament Hill to LeBreton Flats due to construction associated with the Parliament Hill Rehabilitation project. + +Other events fell on the same day coincidentally, such as the first day of the Battle of the Somme in 1916—shortly after which Newfoundland recognized July 1 as Memorial Day to commemorate the Newfoundland Regiment's heavy losses during the battle—and the enactment of the Chinese Immigration Act in 1923, leading Chinese-Canadians to refer to July 1 as Humiliation Day () and boycott Dominion Day celebrations with shop closures, flying the Canadian flag on half-mast, or hanging wreaths in front of home and shop entrances until the act was repealed in 1947. Canada Day also coincides with Quebec's Moving Day, when many fixed-lease apartment rental terms expire. The bill changing the province's moving day from May 1 to July 1 was introduced by a federalist member of the Quebec National Assembly, Jérôme Choquette, in 1973, in order not to affect children still in school in the month of May. + +Activities + +Most communities across the country host organized celebrations for Canada Day, typically outdoor public events, such as parades, carnivals, festivals, barbecues, air and maritime shows, fireworks, and free musical concerts, as well as citizenship ceremonies. There is no standard mode of celebration for Canada Day; Jennifer Welsh, a professor of International Relations at the University of Oxford, said about this: "Canada Day, like the country, is endlessly decentralized. There doesn't seem to be a central recipe for how to celebrate it—chalk it up to the nature of the federation." + +In the national capital of Ottawa, concerts and cultural displays are held on the front lawn of Parliament Hill, as organized by Canadian Heritage, which include the main "noon show" and an evening programme. The event traditionally begins with the singing of "God Save the King" and "O Canada" in English and French followed by a flyover by the Snowbirds. Typically the governor general and prime minister officiate, though the monarch or another member of the royal family may also attend or take the governor general's place. Smaller events are mounted in other parks around the city and in neighbouring Gatineau, Quebec. In provincial capitals, official celebrations are often held at the provincial legislative building, usually in the presence of the lieutenant-governor and/or premier of the province. + +International celebrations + +Canadian expatriates will often organize Canada Day activities in their local area on or near the date of the holiday. Examples include Canada D'eh, an annual celebration that takes place on June 30 at Lan Kwai Fong, in Hong Kong; Canadian Forces' events on bases in Afghanistan; at Trafalgar Square outside Canada House in London, England; in Mexico, at the Royal Canadian Legion in Chapala, and at the Canadian Club in Ajijic. In China, Canada Day celebrations are held at the Bund Beach by the Canadian Chamber of Commerce in Shanghai and at Canadian International School in Beijing, sponsored by the Canada China Business Council. + +Criticism and protest +Given the federal nature of the anniversary, celebrating Canada Day can be a cause of friction in the province of Quebec, where the holiday is overshadowed by the province's Saint-Jean-Baptiste Day (Fête nationale), on June 24. For example, the federal government funds Canada Day events at the Old Port of Montreal—an area run by a federal Crown corporation—while the Fête nationale parade is a grassroots effort that has faced difficulties in operating due to limited funding from the federal government and a lack of corporate sponsors. + +Canada Day has attracted a negative stigma among some indigenous peoples in Canada and their allies, who feel that it is a celebration of the colonization of indigenous land. Criticism of Canada Day celebrations were particularly prominent during Canada's sesquicentennial in 2017, with allegations that the commemorations downplayed the role of indigenous peoples in the country's history and the hardships they face in the present day. + +The same grievances were aired four years later, after possible unmarked graves of indigenous children were found in late-June 2021, at the site of an Indian residential school in British Columbia. If not already cancelled or modified due to restrictions related to the COVID-19 pandemic, Canada Day festivities were cancelled in various communities in British Columbia, New Brunswick, and Northern Saskatchewan, while indigenous protest group Idle No More announced its intent to organize peaceful rallies in multiple major cities. Some politicians supported the cancellations, while others expressed concern that activists were attacking "the very idea of Canada itself" and hampering progress toward reconciliation. + +See also + + Anthems and nationalistic songs of Canada + Culture of Canada + National Flag of Canada Day +National symbols of Canada + Public holidays in Canada + +Notes + +References + +External links + + Government of Canada: Canada Day in the Capital Region + Government of Canada: History of Canada Day + Encyclopaedia Britannica: Canada Day + The Canadian Queen's Dominion Day Message 1959 + +Annual events in Canada +July observances +Public holidays in Canada +National days +Summer events in Canada +The Claudine series consists of four early novels by French authors Colette and Henry Gauthier-Villars, published 1900–1904. Written in diary form, they describe the growth to maturity of a young girl, Claudine. Aged fifteen at the beginning of the first book, Claudine at School, the series describes her education and experiences as she grows up. All the books are written in first-person with the first three having Claudine herself as the narrator. The last in the series, Claudine s'en va, introduces a new narrator, Annie. + +The novels were written in the late 19th century in collaboration with Colette's first husband, the writer Henry Gauthier-Villars, better known by his pen name "Willy". There has been much speculation over the degree of involvement of both Colette and Willy in the writing of the Claudine novels, particularly as Willy was known for often using ghostwriters. Consequently, although the novels were originally attributed to Willy only and published under his name alone, they were later published under both names. After the death of Willy, Colette went to court to challenge her former husband's involvement in any of the writing, and subsequently had his name removed from the books. This decision however was overturned after her death, as Willy's son from a prior relationship, Jacques Gauthier-Villars, successfully sued to have his father's name restored. + +The Claudine novels are thought to be roughly autobiographical. + + Claudine à l'école (1900) – Claudine at School + Claudine à Paris (1901) – Claudine in Paris + Claudine en ménage (1902) – Claudine Married + Claudine s'en va (1903) – Claudine and Annie + +References + +Collaborative book series +Bisexuality-related fiction +Series of books +Colette +1900s novels +1900s LGBT novels +Coronary artery disease (CAD), also called coronary heart disease (CHD), ischemic heart disease (IHD), myocardial ischemia, or simply heart disease, involves the reduction of blood flow to the heart muscle due to build-up of atherosclerotic plaque in the arteries of the heart. It is the most common of the cardiovascular diseases. Types include stable angina, unstable angina, and myocardial infarction. A common symptom is chest pain or discomfort which may travel into the shoulder, arm, back, neck, or jaw. Occasionally it may feel like heartburn. Usually symptoms occur with exercise or emotional stress, last less than a few minutes, and improve with rest. Shortness of breath may also occur and sometimes no symptoms are present. In many cases, the first sign is a heart attack. Other complications include heart failure or an abnormal heartbeat. + +Risk factors include high blood pressure, smoking, diabetes, lack of exercise, obesity, high blood cholesterol, poor diet, depression, and excessive alcohol consumption. A number of tests may help with diagnoses including: electrocardiogram, cardiac stress testing, coronary computed tomographic angiography, and coronary angiogram, among others. + +Ways to reduce CAD risk include eating a healthy diet, regularly exercising, maintaining a healthy weight, and not smoking. Medications for diabetes, high cholesterol, or high blood pressure are sometimes used. There is limited evidence for screening people who are at low risk and do not have symptoms. Treatment involves the same measures as prevention. Additional medications such as antiplatelets (including aspirin), beta blockers, or nitroglycerin may be recommended. Procedures such as percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI) or coronary artery bypass surgery (CABG) may be used in severe disease. In those with stable CAD it is unclear if PCI or CABG in addition to the other treatments improves life expectancy or decreases heart attack risk. + +In 2015, CAD affected 110 million people and resulted in 8.9 million deaths. It makes up 15.6% of all deaths, making it the most common cause of death globally. The risk of death from CAD for a given age decreased between 1980 and 2010, especially in developed countries. The number of cases of CAD for a given age also decreased between 1990 and 2010. In the United States in 2010, about 20% of those over 65 had CAD, while it was present in 7% of those 45 to 64, and 1.3% of those 18 to 45; rates were higher among men than women of a given age. + +Signs and symptoms +The most common symptom is chest pain or discomfort that occurs regularly with activity, after eating, or at other predictable times; this phenomenon is termed stable angina and is associated with narrowing of the arteries of the heart. Angina also includes chest tightness, heaviness, pressure, numbness, fullness, or squeezing. Angina that changes in intensity, character or frequency is termed unstable. Unstable angina may precede myocardial infarction. In adults who go to the emergency department with an unclear cause of pain, about 30% have pain due to coronary artery disease. Angina, shortness of breath, sweating, nausea or vomiting, and lightheadedness are signs of a heart attack, or myocardial infarction, and immediate emergency medical services are crucial. + +With advanced disease, the narrowing of coronary arteries reduces the supply of oxygen-rich blood flowing to the heart, which becomes more pronounced during strenuous activities during which the heart beats faster. For some, this causes severe symptoms, while others experience no symptoms at all. + +Symptoms in women + +Symptoms in women can differ from those in men, and the most common symptom reported by women of all races is shortness of breath. Other symptoms more commonly reported by women than men are extreme fatigue, sleep disturbances, indigestion, and anxiety. However, some women do experience irregular heartbeat, dizziness, sweating, and nausea. Burning, pain, or pressure in the chest or upper abdomen that can travel to the arm or jaw can also be experienced in women, but it is less commonly reported by women than men. On average, women experience symptoms 10 years later than men. Women are less likely to recognize symptoms and seek treatment. + +Risk factors +Coronary artery disease is characterized by heart problems that result from atherosclerosis. Atherosclerosis is a type of arteriosclerosis which is the "chronic inflammation of the arteries which causes them to harden and accumulate cholesterol plaques (atheromatous plaques) on the artery walls". CAD has a number of well determined risk factors that contribute to atherosclerosis. These risk factors for CAD include "smoking, diabetes, high blood pressure (hypertension), abnormal (high) amounts of cholesterol and other fat in the blood (dyslipidemia), type 2 diabetes and being overweight or obese (having excess body fat)" due to lack of exercise and a poor diet. Some other risk factors include high blood pressure, smoking, diabetes, lack of exercise, obesity, high blood cholesterol, poor diet, depression, family history, psychological stress and excessive alcohol. About half of cases are linked to genetics. Smoking and obesity are associated with about 36% and 20% of cases, respectively. Smoking just one cigarette per day about doubles the risk of CAD. Lack of exercise has been linked to 7–12% of cases. Exposure to the herbicide Agent Orange may increase risk. Rheumatologic diseases such as rheumatoid arthritis, systemic lupus erythematosus, psoriasis, and psoriatic arthritis are independent risk factors as well. + +Job stress appears to play a minor role accounting for about 3% of cases. In one study, women who were free of stress from work life saw an increase in the diameter of their blood vessels, leading to decreased progression of atherosclerosis. In contrast, women who had high levels of work-related stress experienced a decrease in the diameter of their blood vessels and significantly increased disease progression. Having a type A behavior pattern, a group of personality characteristics including time urgency, competitiveness, hostility, and impatience, is linked to an increased risk of coronary disease. + +Blood fats +The consumption of different types of fats including trans unsaturated, saturated and trans in a diet "influences the level of cholesterol that is present in the bloodstream". Unsaturated fats originate from plant sources (such as oils). There are two types of unsaturated fats, cis and trans isomers. Cis unsaturated fats are bent in molecular structure and trans are linear in structure. Saturated fats originate from animal sources (such as animal fats) and are also molecularly linear in structure. The linear configurations of unsaturated trans and saturated fats allow them to easily accumulate and stack at the arterial walls when consumed in high amounts (and other positive measures towards physical health are not met). + +Fats and cholesterol are insoluble in blood and thus are amalgamated with proteins to form lipoproteins for transport. Low density lipoproteins (LDL) transport cholesterol from the liver to the rest of the body and therefore raise blood cholesterol levels. The consumption of "saturated fats increases LDL levels within the body, thus raising blood cholesterol levels". +High density lipoproteins (HDL) are considered 'good' lipoproteins as they search for excess cholesterol in the body and transport it back to the liver for disposal. Trans fats also "increase LDL levels whilst decreasing HDL levels within the body, significantly raising blood cholesterol levels". + +High levels of cholesterol in the bloodstream lead to atherosclerosis. With increased levels of LDL in the bloodstream, "LDL particles will form deposits and accumulate within the arterial walls, which will lead to the development of plaques, restricting blood flow". The resultant reduction in the heart's blood supply due to atherosclerosis in coronary arteries "causes shortness of breath, angina pectoris (chest pains that are usually relieved by rest), and potentially fatal heart attacks (myocardial infarctions)". + +Genetics +The heritability of coronary artery disease has been estimated between 40% and 60%. Genome-wide association studies have identified over 160 genetic susceptibility loci for coronary artery disease. + +Transcriptome +Transcripts associated with CAD (TRACs) - FoxP1, ICOSLG, IKZF4/Eos, SMYD3, TRIM28, and TCF3/E2A that are likely markers of regulatory T cells (Treg), consistent with known reductions in Tregs in CAD. + +The RNA changes are mostly related to ciliary and endocytic transcripts, which in the circulating immune system would be related to the immune synapse. The immune synapse is the contact-dependent mode of communication between T cells and B cells, on one side, and a variety of antigen-presenting and immunomodulating cells on the other side. One of the most differentially expressed genes, fibromodulin (FMOD, increased 2.8-fold in CAD). Several other regulated transcripts encode for proteins related to the structure and function of the immune synapse. Nebulette, the most down-regulated transcript (2.4-fold), is an important 'cytolinker' that connects actin and desmin to facilitate cytoskeletal function and vesicular movement. The endocytic pathway is further modulated by changes in tubulin, which is a key microtubule protein, and fidgetin, which is a tubulin-severing enzyme that is a GWAS marker for CV risk. Protein recycling would be modulated by changes in the proteasomal regulator SIAH3, and the ubiquitin ligase MARCHF10. On the ciliary aspect of the immune synapse, several of the modulated transcripts are related to ciliary length and function. Steriocilin (STRC) has been studied principally in outer sensory hair cells, and mutations lead to deafness. Steriocilin is a partner to mesothelin (MSN), a related super-helical protein, whose transcript is also modulated in CAD. Likewise, DCDC2, a double-cortin protein, is a known modulator of ciliary length. In the signaling pathways of the immune synapse, there were numerous transcripts that related directly to T cell function and the control of differentiation. Butyrophilin (BTN1A1) is a known co-regulator for T cell activation. Fibromodulin is a well-known modulator of the TGF-beta signaling pathway, which is a primary determinant of Tre differentiation. Further impact on the TGF-beta pathway is reflected in concurrent changes in the BMP receptor 1B RNA (BMPR1B), because the bone morphogenic proteins are members of the TGF-beta superfamily, and likewise impact Treg differentiation. As noted, several of the transcripts (TMEM98, NRCAM, SFRP5, SHISA2) are known elements of the Wnt signaling pathway, which is major determinant of Treg differentiation. + +Other + Endometriosis in women under the age of 40. + Depression and hostility appear to be risks. + The number of categories of adverse childhood experiences (psychological, physical, or sexual abuse; violence against mother; or living with household members who used substances, mentally ill, suicidal, or incarcerated) showed a graded correlation with the presence of adult diseases including coronary artery (ischemic heart) disease. + Hemostatic factors: High levels of fibrinogen and coagulation factor VII are associated with an increased risk of CAD. + Low hemoglobin. + In the Asian population, the b fibrinogen gene G-455A polymorphism was associated with the risk of CAD. + Patient-specific vessel ageing or remodelling determines endothelial cell behaviour and thus disease growth and progression. Such 'hemodynamic markers' are thus patient-specific risk surrogates. + +Pathophysiology + +Limitation of blood flow to the heart causes ischemia (cell starvation secondary to a lack of oxygen) of the heart's muscle cells. The heart's muscle cells may die from lack of oxygen and this is called a myocardial infarction (commonly referred to as a heart attack). It leads to damage, death, and eventual scarring of the heart muscle without regrowth of heart muscle cells. Chronic high-grade narrowing of the coronary arteries can induce transient ischemia which leads to the induction of a ventricular arrhythmia, which may terminate into a dangerous heart rhythm known as ventricular fibrillation, which often leads to death. + +Typically, coronary artery disease occurs when part of the smooth, elastic lining inside a coronary artery (the arteries that supply blood to the heart muscle) develops atherosclerosis. With atherosclerosis, the artery's lining becomes hardened, stiffened, and accumulates deposits of calcium, fatty lipids, and abnormal inflammatory cells – to form a plaque. Calcium phosphate (hydroxyapatite) deposits in the muscular layer of the blood vessels appear to play a significant role in stiffening the arteries and inducing the early phase of coronary arteriosclerosis. This can be seen in a so-called metastatic mechanism of calciphylaxis as it occurs in chronic kidney disease and hemodialysis. Although these people have kidney dysfunction, almost fifty percent of them die due to coronary artery disease. Plaques can be thought of as large "pimples" that protrude into the channel of an artery, causing partial obstruction to blood flow. People with coronary artery disease might have just one or two plaques, or might have dozens distributed throughout their coronary arteries. A more severe form is chronic total occlusion (CTO) when a coronary artery is completely obstructed for more than 3 months. + +Microvascular angina is chest pain (angina pectoris) and chest discomfort in people who do not show signs of blockages in the larger coronary arteries of their hearts when an angiogram (coronary angiogram) is being performed. +The exact cause of microvascular angina is unknown. Explanations include microvascular dysfunction or epicardial atherosclerosis. For reasons that are not well understood, women are more likely than men to have it; however, hormones and other risk factors unique to women may play a role. + +Diagnosis + +For symptomatic people, stress echocardiography can be used to make a diagnosis for obstructive coronary artery disease. The use of echocardiography, stress cardiac imaging, and/or advanced non-invasive imaging is not recommended on individuals who are exhibiting no symptoms and are otherwise at low risk for developing coronary disease. + +The diagnosis of microvascular angina (previously known as cardiac syndrome X – the rare coronary artery disease that is more common in women, as mentioned, is a diagnosis of exclusion. Therefore, usually, the same tests are used as in any person with the suspected of having coronary artery disease: + Baseline electrocardiography (ECG) + Exercise ECG – Stress test + Exercise radioisotope test (nuclear stress test, myocardial scintigraphy) + Echocardiography (including stress echocardiography) + Coronary angiography + Intravascular ultrasound + Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) + +The diagnosis of coronary disease underlying particular symptoms depends largely on the nature of the symptoms. The first investigation is an electrocardiogram (ECG/EKG), both for stable angina and acute coronary syndrome. An X-ray of the chest and blood tests may be performed. + +Stable angina + +Stable angina is the most common form of ischemic heart disease, and is associated with reduced quality of life and increased mortality. It is caused by epicardial coronary stenosis which results in reduced blood flow and oxygen supply to the myocardium. +Stable angina is characterized as short-term chest pain during physical exertion caused by an imbalance between myocardial oxygen supply and metabolic oxygen demand. Various forms of cardiac stress tests may be used to induce both symptoms and detect changes by way of electrocardiography (using an ECG), echocardiography (using ultrasound of the heart) or scintigraphy (using uptake of radionuclide by the heart muscle). If part of the heart seems to receive an insufficient blood supply, coronary angiography may be used to identify stenosis of the coronary arteries and suitability for angioplasty or bypass surgery. + +In minor to moderate cases, nitroglycerine may be used to alleviate acute symptoms of stable angina or may be used immediately prior to exertion to prevent the onset of angina. Sublingual nitroglycerine is most commonly used to provide rapid relief for acute angina attacks and as a complement to anti-anginal treatments in patients with refractory and recurrent angina. When nitroglycerine enters the bloodstream, it forms free radical nitric oxide, or NO, which activates guanylate cyclase and in turn stimulates the release of cyclic GMP. This molecular signaling stimulates smooth muscle relaxation, ultimately resulting in vasodilation and consequently improved blood flow to regions of the heart affected by atherosclerotic plaque. + +Stable coronary artery disease (SCAD) is also often called stable ischemic heart disease (SIHD). A 2015 monograph explains that "Regardless of the nomenclature, stable angina is the chief manifestation of SIHD or SCAD." There are U.S. and European clinical practice guidelines for SIHD/SCAD. + +Acute coronary syndrome + +Diagnosis of acute coronary syndrome generally takes place in the emergency department, where ECGs may be performed sequentially to identify "evolving changes" (indicating ongoing damage to the heart muscle). Diagnosis is clear-cut if ECGs show elevation of the "ST segment", which in the context of severe typical chest pain is strongly indicative of an acute myocardial infarction (MI); this is termed a STEMI (ST-elevation MI) and is treated as an emergency with either urgent coronary angiography and percutaneous coronary intervention (angioplasty with or without stent insertion) or with thrombolysis ("clot buster" medication), whichever is available. In the absence of ST-segment elevation, heart damage is detected by cardiac markers (blood tests that identify heart muscle damage). If there is evidence of damage (infarction), the chest pain is attributed to a "non-ST elevation MI" (NSTEMI). If there is no evidence of damage, the term "unstable angina" is used. This process usually necessitates hospital admission and close observation on a coronary care unit for possible complications (such as cardiac arrhythmias – irregularities in the heart rate). Depending on the risk assessment, stress testing or angiography may be used to identify and treat coronary artery disease in patients who have had an NSTEMI or unstable angina. + +Risk assessment +There are various risk assessment systems for determining the risk of coronary artery disease, with various emphasis on different variables above. A notable example is Framingham Score, used in the Framingham Heart Study. It is mainly based on age, gender, diabetes, total cholesterol, HDL cholesterol, tobacco smoking, and systolic blood pressure. When it comes to predicting risk in younger adults (18–39 years old), Framingham Risk Score remains below 10-12% for all deciles of baseline-predicted risk. + +Polygenic score is another way of risk assessment. In one study the relative risk of incident coronary events was 91% higher among participants at high genetic risk than among those at low genetic risk. + +Prevention +Up to 90% of cardiovascular disease may be preventable if established risk factors are avoided. Prevention involves adequate physical exercise, decreasing obesity, treating high blood pressure, eating a healthy diet, decreasing cholesterol levels, and stopping smoking. Medications and exercise are roughly equally effective. High levels of physical activity reduce the risk of coronary artery disease by about 25%. Life's Essential 8 are the key measures for improving and maintaining cardiovascular health, as defined by the American Heart Association. AHA added sleep as a factor influencing heart health in 2022. + +Most guidelines recommend combining these preventive strategies. A 2015 Cochrane Review found some evidence that counseling and education to bring about behavioral change might help in high-risk groups. However, there was insufficient evidence to show an effect on mortality or actual cardiovascular events. + +In diabetes mellitus, there is little evidence that very tight blood sugar control improves cardiac risk although improved sugar control appears to decrease other problems such as kidney failure and blindness. + +Diet + +A diet high in fruits and vegetables decreases the risk of cardiovascular disease and death. Vegetarians have a lower risk of heart disease, possibly due to their greater consumption of fruits and vegetables. Evidence also suggests that the Mediterranean diet and a high fiber diet lower the risk. + +The consumption of trans fat (commonly found in hydrogenated products such as margarine) has been shown to cause a precursor to atherosclerosis and increase the risk of coronary artery disease. + +Evidence does not support a beneficial role for omega-3 fatty acid supplementation in preventing cardiovascular disease (including myocardial infarction and sudden cardiac death). There is tentative evidence that intake of menaquinone (Vitamin K2), but not phylloquinone (Vitamin K1), may reduce the risk of CAD mortality. + +Secondary prevention +Secondary prevention is preventing further sequelae of already established disease. Effective lifestyle changes include: + Weight control + Smoking cessation + Avoiding the consumption of trans fats (in partially hydrogenated oils) + Decreasing psychosocial stress + Exercise + +Aerobic exercise, like walking, jogging, or swimming, can reduce the risk of mortality from coronary artery disease. Aerobic exercise can help decrease blood pressure and the amount of blood cholesterol (LDL) over time. It also increases HDL cholesterol. + +Although exercise is beneficial, it is unclear whether doctors should spend time counseling patients to exercise. The U.S. Preventive Services Task Force found "insufficient evidence" to recommend that doctors counsel patients on exercise but "it did not review the evidence for the effectiveness of physical activity to reduce chronic disease, morbidity, and mortality", only the effectiveness of counseling itself. The American Heart Association, based on a non-systematic review, recommends that doctors counsel patients on exercise. + +Psychological symptoms are common in people with CHD, and while many psychological treatments may be offered following cardiac events, there is no evidence that they change mortality, the risk of revascularization procedures, or the rate of non-fatal myocardial infarction. + +Antibiotics for secondary prevention of coronary heart disease + +Antibiotics may help patients with coronary disease to reduce the risk of heart attacks and strokes. However, the latest evidence suggests that antibiotics for secondary prevention of coronary heart disease are harmful with increased mortality and occurrence of stroke. So, the use of antibiotics is not currently supported for preventing secondary coronary heart disease. + +Neuropsychological Assessment +A thorough systematic review found that indeed there is a link between a CHD condition and brain dysfunction in women. Consequently, since research is showing that cardiovascular diseases, like CHD, can play a role as a precursor for dementia, like Alzheimer's disease, individuals with CHD should have a neuropsychological assessment. + +Treatment +There are a number of treatment options for coronary artery disease: + Lifestyle changes + Medical treatment – commonly prescribed drugs (e.g., cholesterol lowering medications, beta-blockers, nitroglycerin, calcium channel blockers, etc.); + Coronary interventions as angioplasty and coronary stent; + Coronary artery bypass grafting (CABG) + +Medications + Statins, which reduce cholesterol, reduce the risk of coronary artery disease + Nitroglycerin + Calcium channel blockers and/or beta-blockers + Antiplatelet drugs such as aspirin + +It is recommended that blood pressure typically be reduced to less than 140/90 mmHg. The diastolic blood pressure however should not be lower than 60 mmHg. Beta blockers are recommended first line for this use. + +Aspirin +In those with no previous history of heart disease, aspirin decreases the risk of a myocardial infarction but does not change the overall risk of death. Aspirin therapy to prevent heart disease is thus recommended only in adults who are at increased risk for cardiovascular events, which may include postmenopausal women, men above 40, and younger people with risk factors for coronary heart disease, including high blood pressure, a family history of heart disease, or diabetes. The benefits outweigh the harms most favorably in people at high risk for a cardiovascular event, where high risk is defined as at least a 3% chance over a five-year period, but others with lower risk may still find the potential benefits worth the associated risks. + +Anti-platelet therapy +Clopidogrel plus aspirin (dual anti-platelet therapy) reduces cardiovascular events more than aspirin alone in those with a STEMI. In others at high risk but not having an acute event, the evidence is weak. Specifically, its use does not change the risk of death in this group. In those who have had a stent, more than 12 months of clopidogrel plus aspirin does not affect the risk of death. + +Surgery +Revascularization for acute coronary syndrome has a mortality benefit. Percutaneous revascularization for stable ischaemic heart disease does not appear to have benefits over medical therapy alone. In those with disease in more than one artery, coronary artery bypass grafts appear better than percutaneous coronary interventions. Newer "anaortic" or no-touch off-pump coronary artery revascularization techniques have shown reduced postoperative stroke rates comparable to percutaneous coronary intervention. Hybrid coronary revascularization has also been shown to be a safe and feasible procedure that may offer some advantages over conventional CABG though it is more expensive. + +Epidemiology + +As of 2010, CAD was the leading cause of death globally resulting in over 7 million deaths. This increased from 5.2 million deaths from CAD worldwide in 1990. It may affect individuals at any age but becomes dramatically more common at progressively older ages, with approximately a tripling with each decade of life. Males are affected more often than females. + +It is estimated that 60% of the world's cardiovascular disease burden will occur in the South Asian subcontinent despite only accounting for 20% of the world's population. This may be secondary to a combination of genetic predisposition and environmental factors. Organizations such as the Indian Heart Association are working with the World Heart Federation to raise awareness about this issue. + +Coronary artery disease is the leading cause of death for both men and women and accounts for approximately 600,000 deaths in the United States every year. According to present trends in the United States, half of healthy 40-year-old men will develop CAD in the future, and one in three healthy 40-year-old women. It is the most common reason for death of men and women over 20 years of age in the United States. + +After analysing data from 2 111 882 patients, the recent meta-analysis revealed that the incidence of coronary artery diseases in breast cancer survicors was 4.29 (95% CI 3.09-5.94) per 1000 person-years. + +Society and culture + +Names +Other terms sometimes used for this condition are "hardening of the arteries" and "narrowing of the arteries". In Latin it is known as morbus ischaemicus cordis (MIC). + +Support groups +The Infarct Combat Project (ICP) is an international nonprofit organization founded in 1998 which tries to decrease ischemic heart diseases through education and research. + +Industry influence on research +In 2016 research into the archives of the Sugar Association, the trade association for the sugar industry in the US, had sponsored an influential literature review published in 1965 in the New England Journal of Medicine that downplayed early findings about the role of a diet heavy in sugar in the development of CAD and emphasized the role of fat; that review influenced decades of research funding and guidance on healthy eating. + +Research + +Research efforts are focused on new angiogenic treatment modalities and various (adult) stem-cell therapies. A region on chromosome 17 was confined to families with multiple cases of myocardial infarction. Other genome-wide studies have identified a firm risk variant on chromosome 9 (9p21.3). However, these and other loci are found in intergenic segments and need further research in understanding how the phenotype is affected. + +A more controversial link is that between Chlamydophila pneumoniae infection and atherosclerosis. While this intracellular organism has been demonstrated in atherosclerotic plaques, evidence is inconclusive as to whether it can be considered a causative factor. Treatment with antibiotics in patients with proven atherosclerosis has not demonstrated a decreased risk of heart attacks or other coronary vascular diseases. + +Myeloperoxidase has been proposed as a biomarker. + +Plant-based nutrition has been suggested as a way to reverse coronary artery disease, but strong evidence is still lacking for claims of potential benefits. + +Several immunosuppressive drugs targeting the chronic inflammation in coronary artery disease have been tested. + +References + +External links + Risk Assessment of having a heart attack or dying of coronary artery disease, from the American Heart Association. + + + +Aging-associated diseases +Heart diseases +Ischemic heart diseases +Wikipedia medicine articles ready to translate +Wikipedia emergency medicine articles ready to translate +Caesium (IUPAC spelling; cesium in American English) is a chemical element with the symbol Cs and atomic number 55. It is a soft, silvery-golden alkali metal with a melting point of , which makes it one of only five elemental metals that are liquid at or near room temperature. Caesium has physical and chemical properties similar to those of rubidium and potassium. It is pyrophoric and reacts with water even at . It is the least electronegative element, with a value of 0.79 on the Pauling scale. It has only one stable isotope, caesium-133. Caesium is mined mostly from pollucite. Caesium-137, a fission product, is extracted from waste produced by nuclear reactors. It has the largest atomic radius of all elements whose radii have been measured or calculated, at about 260 picometers. + +The German chemist Robert Bunsen and physicist Gustav Kirchhoff discovered caesium in 1860 by the newly developed method of flame spectroscopy. The first small-scale applications for caesium were as a "getter" in vacuum tubes and in photoelectric cells. In 1967, acting on Einstein's proof that the speed of light is the most-constant dimension in the universe, the International System of Units used two specific wave counts from an emission spectrum of caesium-133 to co-define the second and the metre. Since then, caesium has been widely used in highly accurate atomic clocks. + +Since the 1990s, the largest application of the element has been as caesium formate for drilling fluids, but it has a range of applications in the production of electricity, in electronics, and in chemistry. The radioactive isotope caesium-137 has a half-life of about 30 years and is used in medical applications, industrial gauges, and hydrology. Nonradioactive caesium compounds are only mildly toxic, but the pure metal's tendency to react explosively with water means that caesium is considered a hazardous material, and the radioisotopes present a significant health and environmental hazard. + +Characteristics + +Physical properties + +Of all elements that are solid at room temperature, caesium is the softest: it has a hardness of 0.2 Mohs. It is a very ductile, pale metal, which darkens in the presence of trace amounts of oxygen. When in the presence of mineral oil (where it is best kept during transport), it loses its metallic lustre and takes on a duller, grey appearance. It has a melting point of , making it one of the few elemental metals that are liquid near room temperature. Mercury is the only stable elemental metal with a known melting point lower than caesium. In addition, the metal has a rather low boiling point, , the lowest of all metals other than mercury. Its compounds burn with a blue or violet colour. + +Caesium forms alloys with the other alkali metals, gold, and mercury (amalgams). At temperatures below , it does not alloy with cobalt, iron, molybdenum, nickel, platinum, tantalum, or tungsten. It forms well-defined intermetallic compounds with antimony, gallium, indium, and thorium, which are photosensitive. It mixes with all the other alkali metals (except lithium); the alloy with a molar distribution of 41% caesium, 47% potassium, and 12% sodium has the lowest melting point of any known metal alloy, at . A few amalgams have been studied: is black with a purple metallic lustre, while CsHg is golden-coloured, also with a metallic lustre. + +The golden colour of caesium comes from the decreasing frequency of light required to excite electrons of the alkali metals as the group is descended. For lithium through rubidium this frequency is in the ultraviolet, but for caesium it enters the blue–violet end of the spectrum; in other words, the plasmonic frequency of the alkali metals becomes lower from lithium to caesium. Thus caesium transmits and partially absorbs violet light preferentially while other colours (having lower frequency) are reflected; hence it appears yellowish. + +Chemical properties + +Caesium metal is highly reactive and pyrophoric. It ignites spontaneously in air, and reacts explosively with water even at low temperatures, more so than the other alkali metals. It reacts with ice at temperatures as low as . Because of this high reactivity, caesium metal is classified as a hazardous material. It is stored and shipped in dry, saturated hydrocarbons such as mineral oil. It can be handled only under inert gas, such as argon. However, a caesium-water explosion is often less powerful than a sodium-water explosion with a similar amount of sodium. This is because caesium explodes instantly upon contact with water, leaving little time for hydrogen to accumulate. Caesium can be stored in vacuum-sealed borosilicate glass ampoules. In quantities of more than about , caesium is shipped in hermetically sealed, stainless steel containers. + +The chemistry of caesium is similar to that of other alkali metals, in particular rubidium, the element above caesium in the periodic table. As expected for an alkali metal, the only common oxidation state is +1. Some slight differences arise from the fact that it has a higher atomic mass and is more electropositive than other (nonradioactive) alkali metals. Caesium is the most electropositive chemical element. The caesium ion is also larger and less "hard" than those of the lighter alkali metals. + +Compounds + +Most caesium compounds contain the element as the cation , which binds ionically to a wide variety of anions. One noteworthy exception is the caeside anion (), and others are the several suboxides (see section on oxides below). More recently, caesium is predicted to behave as a p-block element and capable of forming higher fluorides with higher oxidation states (i.e., CsFn with n > 1) under high pressure. This prediction needs to be validated by further experiments. + +Salts of Cs+ are usually colourless unless the anion itself is coloured. Many of the simple salts are hygroscopic, but less so than the corresponding salts of lighter alkali metals. The phosphate, acetate, carbonate, halides, oxide, nitrate, and sulfate salts are water-soluble. Its double salts are often less soluble, and the low solubility of caesium aluminium sulfate is exploited in refining Cs from ores. The double salts with antimony (such as ), bismuth, cadmium, copper, iron, and lead are also poorly soluble. + +Caesium hydroxide (CsOH) is hygroscopic and strongly basic. It rapidly etches the surface of semiconductors such as silicon. CsOH has been previously regarded by chemists as the "strongest base", reflecting the relatively weak attraction between the large Cs+ ion and OH−; it is indeed the strongest Arrhenius base; however, a number of compounds such as n-butyllithium, sodium amide, sodium hydride, caesium hydride, etc., which cannot be dissolved in water as reacting violently with it but rather only used in some anhydrous polar aprotic solvents, are far more basic on the basis of the Brønsted–Lowry acid–base theory. + +A stoichiometric mixture of caesium and gold will react to form yellow caesium auride (Cs+Au−) upon heating. The auride anion here behaves as a pseudohalogen. The compound reacts violently with water, yielding caesium hydroxide, metallic gold, and hydrogen gas; in liquid ammonia it can be reacted with a caesium-specific ion exchange resin to produce tetramethylammonium auride. The analogous platinum compound, red caesium platinide (), contains the platinide ion that behaves as a . + +Complexes +Like all metal cations, Cs+ forms complexes with Lewis bases in solution. Because of its large size, Cs+ usually adopts coordination numbers greater than 6, the number typical for the smaller alkali metal cations. This difference is apparent in the 8-coordination of CsCl. This high coordination number and softness (tendency to form covalent bonds) are properties exploited in separating Cs+ from other cations in the remediation of nuclear wastes, where 137Cs+ must be separated from large amounts of nonradioactive K+. + +Halides + +Caesium fluoride (CsF) is a hygroscopic white solid that is widely used in organofluorine chemistry as a source of fluoride anions. Caesium fluoride has the halite structure, which means that the Cs+ and F− pack in a cubic closest packed array as do Na+ and Cl− in sodium chloride. Notably, caesium and fluorine have the lowest and highest electronegativities, respectively, among all the known elements. + +Caesium chloride (CsCl) crystallizes in the simple cubic crystal system. Also called the "caesium chloride structure", this structural motif is composed of a primitive cubic lattice with a two-atom basis, each with an eightfold coordination; the chloride atoms lie upon the lattice points at the edges of the cube, while the caesium atoms lie in the holes in the centre of the cubes. This structure is shared with CsBr and CsI, and many other compounds that do not contain Cs. In contrast, most other alkaline halides have the sodium chloride (NaCl) structure. The CsCl structure is preferred because Cs+ has an ionic radius of 174 pm and 181 pm. + +Oxides + +More so than the other alkali metals, caesium forms numerous binary compounds with oxygen. When caesium burns in air, the superoxide is the main product. The "normal" caesium oxide () forms yellow-orange hexagonal crystals, and is the only oxide of the anti- type. It vaporizes at , and decomposes to caesium metal and the peroxide at temperatures above . In addition to the superoxide and the ozonide , several brightly coloured suboxides have also been studied. These include , , , (dark-green), CsO, , as well as . The latter may be heated in a vacuum to generate . Binary compounds with sulfur, selenium, and tellurium also exist. + +Isotopes + +Caesium has 40 known isotopes, ranging in mass number (i.e. number of nucleons in the nucleus) from 112 to 151. Several of these are synthesized from lighter elements by the slow neutron capture process (S-process) inside old stars and by the R-process in supernova explosions. The only stable caesium isotope is 133Cs, with 78 neutrons. Although it has a large nuclear spin (+), nuclear magnetic resonance studies can use this isotope at a resonating frequency of 11.7 MHz. + +The radioactive 135Cs has a very long half-life of about 2.3 million years, the longest of all radioactive isotopes of caesium. 137Cs and 134Cs have half-lives of 30 and two years, respectively. 137Cs decomposes to a short-lived 137mBa by beta decay, and then to nonradioactive barium, while 134Cs transforms into 134Ba directly. The isotopes with mass numbers of 129, 131, 132 and 136, have half-lives between a day and two weeks, while most of the other isotopes have half-lives from a few seconds to fractions of a second. At least 21 metastable nuclear isomers exist. Other than 134mCs (with a half-life of just under 3 hours), all are very unstable and decay with half-lives of a few minutes or less. + +The isotope 135Cs is one of the long-lived fission products of uranium produced in nuclear reactors. However, this fission product yield is reduced in most reactors because the predecessor, 135Xe, is a potent neutron poison and frequently transmutes to stable 136Xe before it can decay to 135Cs. + +The beta decay from 137Cs to 137mBa results in gamma radiation as the 137mBa relaxes to ground state 137Ba, with the emitted photons having an energy of 0.6617 MeV. 137Cs and 90Sr are the principal medium-lived products of nuclear fission, and the prime sources of radioactivity from spent nuclear fuel after several years of cooling, lasting several hundred years. Those two isotopes are the largest source of residual radioactivity in the area of the Chernobyl disaster. Because of the low capture rate, disposing of 137Cs through neutron capture is not feasible and the only current solution is to allow it to decay over time. + +Almost all caesium produced from nuclear fission comes from the beta decay of originally more neutron-rich fission products, passing through various isotopes of iodine and xenon. Because iodine and xenon are volatile and can diffuse through nuclear fuel or air, radioactive caesium is often created far from the original site of fission. With nuclear weapons testing in the 1950s through the 1980s, 137Cs was released into the atmosphere and returned to the surface of the earth as a component of radioactive fallout. It is a ready marker of the movement of soil and sediment from those times. + +Occurrence + +Caesium is a relatively rare element, estimated to average 3 parts per million in the Earth's crust. It is the 45th most abundant element and the 36th among the metals. Nevertheless, it is more abundant than such elements as antimony, cadmium, tin, and tungsten, and two orders of magnitude more abundant than mercury and silver; it is 3.3% as abundant as rubidium, with which it is closely associated, chemically. + +Due to its large ionic radius, caesium is one of the "incompatible elements". During magma crystallization, caesium is concentrated in the liquid phase and crystallizes last. Therefore, the largest deposits of caesium are zone pegmatite ore bodies formed by this enrichment process. Because caesium does not substitute for potassium as readily as rubidium does, the alkali evaporite minerals sylvite (KCl) and carnallite () may contain only 0.002% caesium. Consequently, caesium is found in few minerals. Percentage amounts of caesium may be found in beryl () and avogadrite (), up to 15 wt% Cs2O in the closely related mineral pezzottaite (), up to 8.4 wt% Cs2O in the rare mineral londonite (), and less in the more widespread rhodizite. The only economically important ore for caesium is pollucite , which is found in a few places around the world in zoned pegmatites, associated with the more commercially important lithium minerals, lepidolite and petalite. Within the pegmatites, the large grain size and the strong separation of the minerals results in high-grade ore for mining. + +The world's most significant and richest known source of caesium is the Tanco Mine at Bernic Lake in Manitoba, Canada, estimated to contain 350,000 metric tons of pollucite ore, representing more than two-thirds of the world's reserve base. Although the stoichiometric content of caesium in pollucite is 42.6%, pure pollucite samples from this deposit contain only about 34% caesium, while the average content is 24 wt%. Commercial pollucite contains more than 19% caesium. The Bikita pegmatite deposit in Zimbabwe is mined for its petalite, but it also contains a significant amount of pollucite. Another notable source of pollucite is in the Karibib Desert, Namibia. At the present rate of world mine production of 5 to 10 metric tons per year, reserves will last for thousands of years. + +Production +Mining and refining pollucite ore is a selective process and is conducted on a smaller scale than for most other metals. The ore is crushed, hand-sorted, but not usually concentrated, and then ground. Caesium is then extracted from pollucite primarily by three methods: acid digestion, alkaline decomposition, and direct reduction. + +In the acid digestion, the silicate pollucite rock is dissolved with strong acids, such as hydrochloric (HCl), sulfuric (), hydrobromic (HBr), or hydrofluoric (HF) acids. With hydrochloric acid, a mixture of soluble chlorides is produced, and the insoluble chloride double salts of caesium are precipitated as caesium antimony chloride (), caesium iodine chloride (), or caesium hexachlorocerate (). After separation, the pure precipitated double salt is decomposed, and pure CsCl is precipitated by evaporating the water. + +The sulfuric acid method yields the insoluble double salt directly as caesium alum (). The aluminium sulfate component is converted to insoluble aluminium oxide by roasting the alum with carbon, and the resulting product is leached with water to yield a solution. + +Roasting pollucite with calcium carbonate and calcium chloride yields insoluble calcium silicates and soluble caesium chloride. Leaching with water or dilute ammonia () yields a dilute chloride (CsCl) solution. This solution can be evaporated to produce caesium chloride or transformed into caesium alum or caesium carbonate. Though not commercially feasible, the ore can be directly reduced with potassium, sodium, or calcium in vacuum to produce caesium metal directly. + +Most of the mined caesium (as salts) is directly converted into caesium formate (HCOO−Cs+) for applications such as oil drilling. To supply the developing market, Cabot Corporation built a production plant in 1997 at the Tanco mine near Bernic Lake in Manitoba, with a capacity of per year of caesium formate solution. The primary smaller-scale commercial compounds of caesium are caesium chloride and nitrate. + +Alternatively, caesium metal may be obtained from the purified compounds derived from the ore. Caesium chloride and the other caesium halides can be reduced at with calcium or barium, and caesium metal distilled from the result. In the same way, the aluminate, carbonate, or hydroxide may be reduced by magnesium. + +The metal can also be isolated by electrolysis of fused caesium cyanide (CsCN). Exceptionally pure and gas-free caesium can be produced by thermal decomposition of caesium azide , which can be produced from aqueous caesium sulfate and barium azide. In vacuum applications, caesium dichromate can be reacted with zirconium to produce pure caesium metal without other gaseous products. + + 2 → 2 + 2 + + +The price of 99.8% pure caesium (metal basis) in 2009 was about , but the compounds are significantly cheaper. + +History + +In 1860, Robert Bunsen and Gustav Kirchhoff discovered caesium in the mineral water from Dürkheim, Germany. Because of the bright blue lines in the emission spectrum, they derived the name from the Latin word , meaning . Caesium was the first element to be discovered with a spectroscope, which had been invented by Bunsen and Kirchhoff only a year previously. + +To obtain a pure sample of caesium, of mineral water had to be evaporated to yield of concentrated salt solution. The alkaline earth metals were precipitated either as sulfates or oxalates, leaving the alkali metal in the solution. After conversion to the nitrates and extraction with ethanol, a sodium-free mixture was obtained. From this mixture, the lithium was precipitated by ammonium carbonate. Potassium, rubidium, and caesium form insoluble salts with chloroplatinic acid, but these salts show a slight difference in solubility in hot water, and the less-soluble caesium and rubidium hexachloroplatinate () were obtained by fractional crystallization. After reduction of the hexachloroplatinate with hydrogen, caesium and rubidium were separated by the difference in solubility of their carbonates in alcohol. The process yielded of rubidium chloride and of caesium chloride from the initial 44,000 litres of mineral water. + +From the caesium chloride, the two scientists estimated the atomic weight of the new element at 123.35 (compared to the currently accepted one of 132.9). They tried to generate elemental caesium by electrolysis of molten caesium chloride, but instead of a metal, they obtained a blue homogeneous substance which "neither under the naked eye nor under the microscope showed the slightest trace of metallic substance"; as a result, they assigned it as a subchloride (). In reality, the product was probably a colloidal mixture of the metal and caesium chloride. The electrolysis of the aqueous solution of chloride with a mercury cathode produced a caesium amalgam which readily decomposed under the aqueous conditions. The pure metal was eventually isolated by the Swedish chemist Carl Setterberg while working on his doctorate with Kekulé and Bunsen. In 1882, he produced caesium metal by electrolysing caesium cyanide, avoiding the problems with the chloride. + +Historically, the most important use for caesium has been in research and development, primarily in chemical and electrical fields. Very few applications existed for caesium until the 1920s, when it came into use in radio vacuum tubes, where it had two functions; as a getter, it removed excess oxygen after manufacture, and as a coating on the heated cathode, it increased the electrical conductivity. Caesium was not recognized as a high-performance industrial metal until the 1950s. Applications for nonradioactive caesium included photoelectric cells, photomultiplier tubes, optical components of infrared spectrophotometers, catalysts for several organic reactions, crystals for scintillation counters, and in magnetohydrodynamic power generators. Caesium is also used as a source of positive ions in secondary ion mass spectrometry (SIMS). + +Since 1967, the International System of Measurements has based the primary unit of time, the second, on the properties of caesium. The International System of Units (SI) defines the second as the duration of 9,192,631,770 cycles at the microwave frequency of the spectral line corresponding to the transition between two hyperfine energy levels of the ground state of caesium-133. The 13th General Conference on Weights and Measures of 1967 defined a second as: "the duration of 9,192,631,770 cycles of microwave light absorbed or emitted by the hyperfine transition of caesium-133 atoms in their ground state undisturbed by external fields". + +Applications + +Petroleum exploration +The largest present-day use of nonradioactive caesium is in caesium formate drilling fluids for the extractive oil industry. Aqueous solutions of caesium formate (HCOO−Cs+)—made by reacting caesium hydroxide with formic acid—were developed in the mid-1990s for use as oil well drilling and completion fluids. The function of a drilling fluid is to lubricate drill bits, to bring rock cuttings to the surface, and to maintain pressure on the formation during drilling of the well. Completion fluids assist the emplacement of control hardware after drilling but prior to production by maintaining the pressure. + +The high density of the caesium formate brine (up to 2.3 g/cm3, or 19.2 pounds per gallon), coupled with the relatively benign nature of most caesium compounds, reduces the requirement for toxic high-density suspended solids in the drilling fluid—a significant technological, engineering and environmental advantage. Unlike the components of many other heavy liquids, caesium formate is relatively environment-friendly. Caesium formate brine can be blended with potassium and sodium formates to decrease the density of the fluids to that of water (1.0 g/cm3, or 8.3 pounds per gallon). Furthermore, it is biodegradable and may be recycled, which is important in view of its high cost (about $4,000 per barrel in 2001). Alkali formates are safe to handle and do not damage the producing formation or downhole metals as corrosive alternative, high-density brines (such as zinc bromide solutions) sometimes do; they also require less cleanup and reduce disposal costs. + +Atomic clocks + +Caesium-based atomic clocks use the electromagnetic transitions in the hyperfine structure of caesium-133 atoms as a reference point. The first accurate caesium clock was built by Louis Essen in 1955 at the National Physical Laboratory in the UK. Caesium clocks have improved over the past half-century and are regarded as "the most accurate realization of a unit that mankind has yet achieved." These clocks measure frequency with an error of 2 to 3 parts in 1014, which corresponds to an accuracy of 2 nanoseconds per day, or one second in 1.4 million years. The latest versions are more accurate than 1 part in 1015, about 1 second in 20 million years. The caesium standard is the primary standard for standards-compliant time and frequency measurements. Caesium clocks regulate the timing of cell phone networks and the Internet. + +Definition of the second +The second, symbol s, is the SI unit of time. The BIPM restated its definition at its 26th conference in 2018: "[The second] is defined by taking the fixed numerical value of the caesium frequency , the unperturbed ground-state hyperfine transition frequency of the caesium-133 atom, to be when expressed in the unit Hz, which is equal to s−1." + +Electric power and electronics +Caesium vapour thermionic generators are low-power devices that convert heat energy to electrical energy. In the two-electrode vacuum tube converter, caesium neutralizes the space charge near the cathode and enhances the current flow. + +Caesium is also important for its photoemissive properties, converting light to electron flow. It is used in photoelectric cells because caesium-based cathodes, such as the intermetallic compound , have a low threshold voltage for emission of electrons. The range of photoemissive devices using caesium include optical character recognition devices, photomultiplier tubes, and video camera tubes. Nevertheless, germanium, rubidium, selenium, silicon, tellurium, and several other elements can be substituted for caesium in photosensitive materials. + +Caesium iodide (CsI), bromide (CsBr) and caesium fluoride (CsF) crystals are employed for scintillators in scintillation counters widely used in mineral exploration and particle physics research to detect gamma and X-ray radiation. Being a heavy element, caesium provides good stopping power with better detection. Caesium compounds may provide a faster response (CsF) and be less hygroscopic (CsI). + +Caesium vapour is used in many common magnetometers. + +The element is used as an internal standard in spectrophotometry. Like other alkali metals, caesium has a great affinity for oxygen and is used as a "getter" in vacuum tubes. Other uses of the metal include high-energy lasers, vapour glow lamps, and vapour rectifiers. + +Centrifugation fluids +The high density of the caesium ion makes solutions of caesium chloride, caesium sulfate, and caesium trifluoroacetate () useful in molecular biology for density gradient ultracentrifugation. This technology is used primarily in the isolation of viral particles, subcellular organelles and fractions, and nucleic acids from biological samples. + +Chemical and medical use + +Relatively few chemical applications use caesium. Doping with caesium compounds enhances the effectiveness of several metal-ion catalysts for chemical synthesis, such as acrylic acid, anthraquinone, ethylene oxide, methanol, phthalic anhydride, styrene, methyl methacrylate monomers, and various olefins. It is also used in the catalytic conversion of sulfur dioxide into sulfur trioxide in the production of sulfuric acid. + +Caesium fluoride enjoys a niche use in organic chemistry as a base and as an anhydrous source of fluoride ion. Caesium salts sometimes replace potassium or sodium salts in organic synthesis, such as cyclization, esterification, and polymerization. Caesium has also been used in thermoluminescent radiation dosimetry (TLD): When exposed to radiation, it acquires crystal defects that, when heated, revert with emission of light proportionate to the received dose. Thus, measuring the light pulse with a photomultiplier tube can allow the accumulated radiation dose to be quantified. + +Nuclear and isotope applications +Caesium-137 is a radioisotope commonly used as a gamma-emitter in industrial applications. Its advantages include a half-life of roughly 30 years, its availability from the nuclear fuel cycle, and having 137Ba as a stable end product. The high water solubility is a disadvantage which makes it incompatible with large pool irradiators for food and medical supplies. It has been used in agriculture, cancer treatment, and the sterilization of food, sewage sludge, and surgical equipment. Radioactive isotopes of caesium in radiation devices were used in the medical field to treat certain types of cancer, but emergence of better alternatives and the use of water-soluble caesium chloride in the sources, which could create wide-ranging contamination, gradually put some of these caesium sources out of use. Caesium-137 has been employed in a variety of industrial measurement gauges, including moisture, density, levelling, and thickness gauges. It has also been used in well logging devices for measuring the electron density of the rock formations, which is analogous to the bulk density of the formations. + +Caesium-137 has been used in hydrologic studies analogous to those with tritium. As a daughter product of fission bomb testing from the 1950s through the mid-1980s, caesium-137 was released into the atmosphere, where it was absorbed readily into solution. Known year-to-year variation within that period allows correlation with soil and sediment layers. Caesium-134, and to a lesser extent caesium-135, have also been used in hydrology to measure the caesium output by the nuclear power industry. While they are less prevalent than either caesium-133 or caesium-137, these bellwether isotopes are produced solely from anthropogenic sources. + +Other uses + +Caesium and mercury were used as a propellant in early ion engines designed for spacecraft propulsion on very long interplanetary or extraplanetary missions. The fuel was ionized by contact with a charged tungsten electrode. But corrosion by caesium on spacecraft components has pushed development in the direction of inert gas propellants, such as xenon, which are easier to handle in ground-based tests and do less potential damage to the spacecraft. Xenon was used in the experimental spacecraft Deep Space 1 launched in 1998. Nevertheless, field-emission electric propulsion thrusters that accelerate liquid metal ions such as caesium have been built. + +Caesium nitrate is used as an oxidizer and pyrotechnic colorant to burn silicon in infrared flares, such as the LUU-19 flare, because it emits much of its light in the near infrared spectrum. Caesium compounds may have been used as fuel additives to reduce the radar signature of exhaust plumes in the Lockheed A-12 CIA reconnaissance aircraft. Caesium and rubidium have been added as a carbonate to glass because they reduce electrical conductivity and improve stability and durability of fibre optics and night vision devices. Caesium fluoride or caesium aluminium fluoride are used in fluxes formulated for brazing aluminium alloys that contain magnesium. + +Magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) power-generating systems were researched, but failed to gain widespread acceptance. Caesium metal has also been considered as the working fluid in high-temperature Rankine cycle turboelectric generators. + +Caesium salts have been evaluated as antishock reagents following the administration of arsenical drugs. Because of their effect on heart rhythms, however, they are less likely to be used than potassium or rubidium salts. They have also been used to treat epilepsy. + +Caesium-133 can be laser cooled and used to probe fundamental and technological problems in quantum physics. It has a particularly convenient Feshbach spectrum to enable studies of ultracold atoms requiring tunable interactions. + +Health and safety hazards + +Nonradioactive caesium compounds are only mildly toxic, and nonradioactive caesium is not a significant environmental hazard. Because biochemical processes can confuse and substitute caesium with potassium, excess caesium can lead to hypokalemia, arrhythmia, and acute cardiac arrest, but such amounts would not ordinarily be encountered in natural sources. + +The median lethal dose (LD50) for caesium chloride in mice is 2.3 g per kilogram, which is comparable to the LD50 values of potassium chloride and sodium chloride. The principal use of nonradioactive caesium is as caesium formate in petroleum drilling fluids because it is much less toxic than alternatives, though it is more costly. + +Caesium metal is one of the most reactive elements and is highly explosive in the presence of water. The hydrogen gas produced by the reaction is heated by the thermal energy released at the same time, causing ignition and a violent explosion. This can occur with other alkali metals, but caesium is so potent that this explosive reaction can be triggered even by cold water. + +It is highly pyrophoric: the autoignition temperature of caesium is , and it ignites explosively in air to form caesium hydroxide and various oxides. Caesium hydroxide is a very strong base, and will rapidly corrode glass. + +The isotopes 134 and 137 are present in the biosphere in small amounts from human activities, differing by location. Radiocaesium does not accumulate in the body as readily as other fission products (such as radioiodine and radiostrontium). About 10% of absorbed radiocaesium washes out of the body relatively quickly in sweat and urine. The remaining 90% has a biological half-life between 50 and 150 days. Radiocaesium follows potassium and tends to accumulate in plant tissues, including fruits and vegetables. Plants vary widely in the absorption of caesium, sometimes displaying great resistance to it. It is also well-documented that mushrooms from contaminated forests accumulate radiocaesium (caesium-137) in the fungal sporocarps. Accumulation of caesium-137 in lakes has been a great concern after the Chernobyl disaster. Experiments with dogs showed that a single dose of 3.8 millicuries (140 MBq, 4.1 μg of caesium-137) per kilogram is lethal within three weeks; smaller amounts may cause infertility and cancer. The International Atomic Energy Agency and other sources have warned that radioactive materials, such as caesium-137, could be used in radiological dispersion devices, or "dirty bombs". + +See also + + Acerinox accident, a caesium-137 contamination accident in 1998 + Goiânia accident, a major radioactive contamination incident in 1987 involving caesium-137 + Kramatorsk radiological accident, a 137Cs lost-source incident between 1980 and 1989 + +Notes + +References + +External links + + Caesium or Cesium at The Periodic Table of Videos (University of Nottingham) + View the reaction of Caesium (most reactive metal in the periodic table) with Fluorine (most reactive non-metal) courtesy of The Royal Institution. + + + +Alkali metals +Chemical elements with body-centered cubic structure +Chemical elements +Glycine receptor agonists +Reducing agents +Articles containing video clips +A century is a period of 100 years. Centuries are numbered ordinally in English and many other languages. The word century comes from the Latin centum, meaning one hundred. Century is sometimes abbreviated as c. + +A centennial or centenary is a hundredth anniversary, or a celebration of this, typically the remembrance of an event which took place a hundred years earlier. + +Start and end of centuries +Although a century can mean any arbitrary period of 100 years, there are two viewpoints on the nature of standard centuries. One is based on strict construction, while the other is based on popular perception. + +According to the strict construction, the 1st century AD began with AD 1 and ended with AD 100, the 2nd century spanning the years 101 to 200, with the same pattern continuing onward. In this model, the n-th century starts with the year that ends with "01", and ends with the year that ends with "00"; for example, the 20th century comprises the years 1901 to 2000 in strict usage. + +In popular perception and practice, centuries are structured by grouping years based on sharing the 'hundreds' digit(s). In this model, the n-th century starts with the year that ends in "00" and ends with the year ending in "99"; for example, the years 1900 to 1999, in popular culture, constitute the 20th century. (This is similar to the grouping of "0-to-9 decades" which share the 'tens' digit.) + +To facilitate calendrical calculations by computer, the astronomical year numbering and ISO 8601 systems both contain a year zero, with the astronomical year 0 corresponding to the year 1 BCE, the astronomical year -1 corresponding to 2 BCE, and so on. + +Alternative naming systems + +Informally, years may be referred to in groups based on the hundreds part of the year. In this system, the years 1900–1999 are referred to as the nineteen hundreds (1900s). Aside from English usage, this system is used in Swedish, Danish, Norwegian, Icelandic, Finnish and Hungarian. The Swedish (or ), Danish (or ), Norwegian (or ), Finnish (or ) and Hungarian (or ) refer unambiguously to the years 1900–1999. + +Italian also has a similar system, but it only expresses the hundreds and omits the word for 'thousand'. This system mainly functions from the 11th to the 20th century: + (that is 'the four hundred', the 15th century) + (that is 'the five hundred', the 16th century). +These terms are often used in other languages when referring to the history of Italy. + +Similar dating units in other calendar systems +While the century has been commonly used in the West, other cultures and calendars have utilized differently sized groups of years in a similar manner. The Hindu calendar, in particular, summarizes its years into groups of 60, while the Aztec calendar considers groups of 52. + +See also + + Age of Discovery + Ancient history + Before Christ + Common Era + Decade + List of decades, centuries, and millennia + Lustrum + Middle Ages + Millennium + Modern era + Saeculum + Year + +Notes + +References + +Bibliography + The Battle of the Centuries, Ruth Freitag, U.S. Government Printing Office. Available from the Superintendent of Documents, P.O. Box 371954, Pittsburgh, PA 15250- 7954. Cite stock no. 030-001-00153-9. Retrieved 3 March 2019. + +100 (number) + +Units of time +Cardiff (; ) is the capital and largest city of Wales. Cardiff had a population of 362,310 in 2021, and forms a principal area officially known as the City and County of Cardiff (). The city is the eleventh-largest in the United Kingdom. Located in the south-east of Wales and in the Cardiff Capital Region, Cardiff is the county town of the historic county of Glamorgan and in 1974–1996 of South Glamorgan. It belongs to the Eurocities network of the largest European cities. A small town until the early 19th century, its prominence as a port for coal when mining began in the region helped its expansion. In 1905, it was ranked as a city and in 1955 proclaimed capital of Wales. Cardiff Built-up Area covers a larger area outside the county boundary, including the towns of Dinas Powys and Penarth. + +Cardiff is the main commercial centre of Wales as well as the base for the Senedd, the Welsh Parliament. At the 2021 census, the unitary authority area population was put at 362,400. The population of the wider urban area in 2011 was 479,000. In 2011, it ranked sixth in the world in a National Geographic magazine list of alternative tourist destinations. It is the most popular destination in Wales with 21.3 million visitors in 2017. + +Cardiff is a major centre for television and film production (such as the 2005 revival of Doctor Who, Torchwood and Sherlock) and is the Welsh base for the main national broadcasters. + +Cardiff Bay contains the Senedd building and the Wales Millennium Centre arts complex. Work continues at Cardiff Bay and in the centre, on projects such as Cardiff International Sports Village, BBC drama village, and a new business district. + +Etymology + (the Welsh name of the city) derives from the Middle Welsh . The change from to shows the colloquial alteration of Welsh f and dd , and was perhaps also driven by folk etymology. This sound change had probably first occurred in the Middle Ages; both forms were current in the Tudor period. has its origins in post-Roman Brythonic words meaning "the fort of the Taff". The fort probably refers to that established by the Romans. is Welsh for fort and is in effect a form of (Taff), the river which flows by Cardiff Castle, with the showing consonant mutation to and the vowel showing affection as a result of a (lost) genitive case ending. + +The anglicised Cardiff is derived from , with the Welsh f borrowed as ff , as also happens in Taff (from Welsh ) and Llandaff (from Welsh ). + +The antiquarian William Camden (1551–1623) suggested that the name Cardiff may derive from * ("the Fort of Didius"), a name supposedly given in honour of , governor of a nearby province at the time when the Roman fort was established. Although some sources repeat this theory, it has been rejected on linguistic grounds by modern scholars such as Professor Pierce. + +History + +Origins +Archaeological evidence from sites in and around Cardiff show that people had settled in the area by at least around 6000 BC, during the early Neolithic; about 1,500 years before either Stonehenge or the Great Pyramid of Giza was completed. These include the St Lythans burial chamber near Wenvoe, (approximately west of Cardiff city centre); the Tinkinswood burial chamber, near St. Nicholas (about west of Cardiff city centre), the Cae'rarfau Chambered Tomb, Creigiau (about northwest of Cardiff city centre) and the Gwern y Cleppa long barrow, near Coedkernew, Newport (about northeast of Cardiff city centre). A group of five Bronze Age tumuli is at the summit of the Garth, within the county's northern boundary. Four Iron Age hill fort and enclosure sites have been identified within Cardiff's county boundaries, including Caerau Hillfort, an enclosed area of . + +Until the Roman conquest of Britain, Cardiff was part of the territory of the Silures – a Celtic British tribe that flourished in the Iron Age – whose territory included the areas that would become known as Breconshire, Monmouthshire and Glamorgan. The fort established by the Romans near the mouth of the River Taff in AD 75, in what would become the north western boundary of the centre of Cardiff, was built over an extensive settlement that had been established by the Romans in the 50s AD. The fort was one of a series of military outposts associated with Isca Augusta (Caerleon) that acted as border defences. The fort may have been abandoned in the early 2nd century as the area had been subdued. However, by this time a civilian settlement, or vicus, was established. It was likely made up of traders who made a living from the fort, ex-soldiers and their families. A Roman villa has been discovered at Ely. Contemporary with the Saxon Shore forts of the 3rd and 4th centuries, a stone fortress was established at Cardiff. Similar to the shore forts, the fortress was built to protect Britannia from raiders. Coins from the reign of Gratian indicate that Cardiff was inhabited until at least the 4th century; the fort was abandoned towards the end of the 4th century, as the last Roman legions left the province of Britannia with Magnus Maximus. + +Little is known of the fort and civilian settlement in the period between the Roman departure from Britain and the Norman Conquest. The settlement probably shrank in size and may even have been abandoned. In the absence of Roman rule, Wales was divided into small kingdoms; early on, Meurig ap Tewdrig emerged as the local king in Glywysing (which later became Glamorgan). The area passed through his family until the advent of the Normans in the 11th century. + +Norman occupation and Middle Ages + +In 1081 William I, King of England, began work on the castle keep within the walls of the old Roman fort. Cardiff Castle has been at the heart of the city ever since. The castle was substantially altered and extended during the Victorian period by John Crichton-Stuart, 3rd Marquess of Bute, and the architect William Burges. Original Roman work can, however, still be distinguished in the wall facings. + +A town grew up under the castle, consisting mainly of settlers from England. Cardiff had a population of between 1,500 and 2,000 in the Middle Ages – a normal size for a Welsh town in the period. It was the centre of the Norman Marcher Lordship of Glamorgan. By the end of the 13th century, Cardiff was the only town in Wales with a population exceeding 2,000, although it remained relatively small compared with notable towns in England and continued to be contained within its walls, which were begun as a wooden palisade in the early 12th century. It was of sufficient size and importance to receive a series of charters, notably in 1331 from William La Zouche, Lord of Glamorgan through marriage with the de Clare family, Edward III in 1359, then Henry IV in 1400, and later Henry VI. + +In 1404, Owain Glyndŵr burned Cardiff and took possession of the Castle. As many of the buildings were made of timber and tightly packed within the town walls, much of Cardiff was destroyed. The settlement was soon rebuilt on the same street plan and began to flourish again. (Glyndŵr's statue was erected in Cardiff Town Hall in the early 20th century, reflecting the complex, often conflicting cultural identity of Cardiff as capital of Wales.) Besides serving an important political role in the governance of the fertile south Glamorgan coastal plain, Cardiff was a busy port in the Middle Ages and declared a staple port in 1327. + +County town of Glamorganshire + +In 1536, the Laws in Wales Acts 1535–1542 led to the creation of Glamorganshire and Cardiff was made the county town, it also became part of Kibbor hundred, around the same time the Herberts became the most powerful family in the area. In 1538, Henry VIII closed Cardiff's Dominican and Franciscan friaries, whose remains were used as building materials. A writer in this period noted: "The River Taff runs under the walls of his honours castle and from the north part of the town to the south part where there is a fair quay and a safe harbour for shipping." + +Cardiff became a borough in 1542 and further Royal Charters were granted to it by Elizabeth I in 1600 and James I in 1608. In 1573, it was made a head port for collection of customs duties. Pembrokeshire historian George Owen described Cardiff in 1602 as "the fayrest towne in Wales yett not the welthiest". It gained a second Royal Charter in 1608. + +A disastrous flood in the Bristol Channel on 30 January 1607 (now believed to have been a tidal wave) changed the course of the River Taff and ruined St Mary's Parish Church, which was replaced by a chapel of ease dedicated to St John the Baptist. + +During the Second English Civil War St Fagans, just to the west of the town, the Battle of St Fagans, between Royalist rebels and a New Model Army detachment, was a decisive victory for the Parliamentarians that allowed Oliver Cromwell to conquer Wales. It was the last major battle in Wales, with about 200, mostly Royalist soldiers killed. + +Cardiff was at peace throughout the ensuing century. In 1766, John Stuart, 1st Marquess of Bute married into the Herbert family and was later created Baron Cardiff. In 1778, he began renovating Cardiff Castle. A racecourse, printing press, bank and coffee house opened in the 1790s and Cardiff gained a stagecoach service to London. Despite these improvements, Cardiff's position in the Welsh urban hierarchy declined over the 18th century. Iolo Morganwg called it "an obscure and inconsiderable place" and the 1801 census found a population of only 1,870, making it only the 25th largest town in Wales, well behind Merthyr and Swansea. + +Building the docks + +In 1793, John Crichton-Stuart, 2nd Marquess of Bute was born. He spent his life building the Cardiff docks and was later hailed as "the creator of modern Cardiff". A twice-weekly boat service between Cardiff and Bristol opened in 1815, and in 1821, the Cardiff Gas Works was established. + +After the Napoleonic Wars Cardiff suffered some social and industrial unrest, starting with the trial and hanging of Dic Penderyn in 1831. + +The town grew rapidly from the 1830s onwards, when the Marquess of Bute built a dock, which eventually linked to the Taff Vale Railway. Cardiff became the main port for coal exports from the Cynon, Rhondda, and Rhymney valleys, and grew in population at a rate of nearly 80 per cent per decade between 1840 and 1870. Much of this was due to migration from within and outside Wales: in 1841, a quarter of Cardiff's population were English-born and more than 10 per cent born in Ireland. By the 1881 census, Cardiff had overtaken Merthyr and Swansea to become the largest town in Wales. Cardiff's status as the premier town in South Wales was confirmed when it was chosen as the site for the University College of South Wales and Monmouthshire in 1883. + +A permanent military presence was established with the completion of Maindy Barracks in 1877. + +Cardiff faced a challenge in the 1880s when David Davies of Llandinam and the Barry Railway Company promoted rival docks at Barry. These had the advantage of being accessible in all tides: David Davies claimed his venture would cause "grass to grow in the streets of Cardiff". From 1901 coal exports from Barry surpassed those from Cardiff, but the administration of the coal trade remained centred on Cardiff, in particular its Coal Exchange, where the price of coal on the British market was determined and the first million-pound deal was struck in 1907. The city also strengthened its industrial base when the owners of the Dowlais Ironworks in Merthyr (who would later form part of Guest, Keen and Nettlefolds) built a steelworks close to the docks at East Moors, which Lord Bute opened on 4 February 1891. + +County Borough of Cardiff +Cardiff became a county borough on 1 April 1889 under the Local Government Act 1888. The town had grown rapidly and had a population of over 123,000. It retained its county borough status until 1974. + +City and capital city status + +King Edward VII granted Cardiff city status on 28 October 1905. It acquired a Roman Catholic cathedral in 1916. Later, more national institutions came to the city, including the National Museum of Wales, the Welsh National War Memorial, and the University of Wales Registry Building, but it was denied the National Library of Wales, partly because the library's founder, Sir John Williams, considered Cardiff to have "a non-Welsh population". + +After a brief post-war boom, Cardiff docks entered a prolonged decline in the interwar period. By 1936, trade was at less than half its value in 1913, reflecting the slump in demand for Welsh coal. Bomb damage in the Cardiff Blitz of World War II included the devastation of Llandaff Cathedral, and in the immediate postwar years, the city's link with the Bute family came to an end. + +The city was recognised as the capital city of Wales on 20 December 1955, in a written reply by the Home Secretary, Gwilym Lloyd George. Caernarfon had also vied for the title. Welsh local authorities had been divided: only 76 out of 161 chose Cardiff in a 1924 poll organised by the South Wales Daily News. The subject was not debated again until 1950, and meanwhile Cardiff took steps to promote its "Welshness". The stalemate between Cardiff and cities such as Caernarfon and Aberystwyth was not broken until Cardiganshire County Council decided to support Cardiff; and in a new local authority vote, 134 out of 161 voted for Cardiff. + +Cardiff therefore celebrated two important anniversaries in 2005. The Encyclopedia of Wales notes that the decision to recognise the city as the capital of Wales "had more to do with the fact that it contained marginal Conservative constituencies than any reasoned view of what functions a Welsh capital should have." Although the city hosted the Commonwealth Games in 1958, Cardiff only became a centre of national administration with the establishment of the Welsh Office in 1964, which later prompted the creation of various other public bodies such as the Arts Council of Wales and the Welsh Development Agency, most of which were based in Cardiff. + +The East Moors Steelworks closed in 1978 and Cardiff lost population in the 1980s, consistent with a wider pattern of counter-urbanisation in Britain. However, it recovered to become one of the few cities outside London where population grew in the 1990s. During this period the Cardiff Bay Development Corporation was promoting the redevelopment of south Cardiff; an evaluation of the regeneration of Cardiff Bay published in 2004 concluded that the project had "reinforced the competitive position of Cardiff" and "contributed to a massive improvement in the quality of the built environment, although it had "failed "to attract the major inward investors originally anticipated". + +In the 1997 Welsh devolution referendum, Cardiff voters rejected the establishment of the National Assembly for Wales by 55.4% to 44.2% on a 47% turnout, which Denis Balsom partly ascribed to a general preference in Cardiff and some other parts of Wales for a British rather than exclusively Welsh identity. The relative lack of local support for the Assembly and difficulties between the Welsh Office and Cardiff Council in acquiring the originally preferred venue, Cardiff City Hall, encouraged other local authorities to bid to house the Assembly. However, the Assembly was eventually located at Tŷ Hywel in Cardiff Bay in 1999. In 2005, a new debating chamber on an adjacent site, designed by Richard Rogers, was opened. + +Government + +The Senedd (Welsh Parliament; ) has been based in Cardiff Bay since its formation in 1999 as the "National Assembly for Wales". The Senedd building was opened on 1 March 2006 by The Queen. The Members of the Senedd (MSs), the Senedd Commission and ministerial support staff are based in Cardiff Bay. + +Cardiff elects four constituency Members of the Senedd to the Senedd; the constituencies for the Senedd are the same as for the UK Parliament. All of the city's electors have an extra vote for the South Wales Central regional members; this system increases proportionality to the Senedd. The most recent Senedd general election was held on 6 May 2021. + +In the Senedd, Cardiff is represented by Jenny Rathbone (Labour) in Cardiff Central, Julie Morgan (Labour) in Cardiff North, Vaughan Gething (Labour) in Cardiff South and Penarth and First Minister of Wales Mark Drakeford (Labour) in Cardiff West. + +At Westminster, Cardiff is represented by four Labour MPs: Jo Stevens in Cardiff Central, Anna McMorrin in Cardiff North, Stephen Doughty in Cardiff South and Penarth, and Kevin Brennan in Cardiff West. + +The Welsh Government is headquartered in Cardiff's Cathays Park, where most of its civil servants are based, with smaller numbers in other central locations: Cathays, Canton, and Cardiff Bay. There are other Welsh Government offices in other parts of Wales, such as Llandudno and Aberystwyth, and there are international offices. + +Local government + +Between 1889 and 1974 Cardiff was a county borough governed by Cardiff County Borough Council (known as Cardiff City Council after 1905). Between 1974 and 1996, Cardiff was governed by Cardiff City Council, a district council of South Glamorgan. Since local government reorganisation in 1996, Cardiff has been governed by the City and County Council of Cardiff, based at County Hall in Atlantic Wharf, Cardiff Bay. Voters elect 75 councillors every four years. + +Between the 2004 and 2012 local elections, no individual political party held a majority on Cardiff County Council. The Liberal Democrats held the largest number of seats and Cllr Rodney Berman was Leader of the council. The Liberal Democrats and Plaid Cymru formed a partnership administration. In the 2012 elections the Labour Party achieved an outright majority, after gaining an additional 33 seats across the city. + +Cardiff is divided into communities, several with their own community council and the rest governed directly by Cardiff City Council. Elections are held every five years. The last contested elections would have been held at the same time as the 2017 Cardiff Council election had there been more candidates standing than available seats. Those with community councils are: +Lisvane (10 seats) +Old St. Mellons (9 seats) +Pentyrch (13 seats) +Radyr & Morganstown (13 seats) +Tongwynlais (9 seats) +St Fagans (9 seats) + +Geography + +The centre of Cardiff is relatively flat and bounded by hills to the east, north and west. Its location influenced its development as the world's largest coal port, notably its proximity and easy access to the coalfields of the South Wales Valleys. The highest point in the local authority area is Garth Hill, above sea level. + +Cardiff is built on reclaimed marshland on a bed of Triassic stones. This reclaimed marshland stretches from Chepstow to the Ely Estuary, which is the natural boundary of Cardiff and the Vale of Glamorgan. Triassic landscapes of this part of the world are usually shallow and low-lying, consistent with the flatness of the centre of Cardiff. The classic Triassic marl, sand and conglomerate rocks are used predominantly throughout Cardiff as building materials. Many of these Triassic rocks are purplish, especially the coastal marl found near Penarth. One of the Triassic rocks used in Cardiff is "Radyr Stone", a freestone which as its name suggests is quarried in the Radyr district. Cardiff has also imported some materials for buildings: Devonian sandstones (the Old Red Sandstone) from the Brecon Beacons has been used. Most famously, the buildings of Cathays Park, the civic centre in the centre of the city, are built of Portland stone from Dorset. A widely used building stone in Cardiff is the yellow-grey Liassic limestone rock of the Vale of Glamorgan, including the rare "Sutton Stone", a conglomerate of lias limestone and carboniferous limestone. + +Cardiff is bordered to the west by the rural district of the Vale of Glamorgan, also known as the Garden of Cardiff, to the east by the city of Newport; to the north by the South Wales Valleys, and to the south by the Severn Estuary and Bristol Channel. The River Taff winds through the city centre and together with the River Ely flows into the freshwater Cardiff Bay. A third river, the Rhymney, flows through the east of the city directly into the Severn Estuary. + +Cardiff lies near the Glamorgan Heritage Coast, stretching westward from Penarth and Barry – commuter towns of Cardiff – with striped yellow-blue Jurassic limestone cliffs. The Glamorgan coast is the only part of the Celtic Sea with exposed Jurassic (blue lias) geology. This stretch of coast with its reefs, sandbanks and serrated cliffs was a ship graveyard; many ships sailing to Cardiff during the industrial era were wrecked on this hostile coastline during west/south-westerly gales. Smuggling, deliberate shipwrecking and attacks on ships were also common. + +Cityscape + +"Inner Cardiff" consists of the wards of Plasnewydd, Gabalfa, Roath, Cathays, Adamsdown and Splott ward on the north and east of the city centre, and Butetown, Grangetown, Riverside and Canton to the south and west. The inner-city areas to the south of the A4161 road, known as the "Southern Arc", are with the exception of Cardiff Bay some of the poorest districts of Wales, with low levels of economic activity. On the other hand, Gabalfa, Plasnewydd and Cathays north of the 'arc' have large student populations, and Pontcanna (north of Riverside and alongside Canton) is a favourite for students and young professionals. Penylan, to the north east of Roath Park, is an affluent area popular with older parents and the retired. + +To the west lie Ely and Caerau, which have some of the largest housing estates in the United Kingdom. With the exception of some outlying privately built estates at Michaelston-super-Ely, this is an economically disadvantaged area with high numbers of unemployed households. Culverhouse Cross is a more affluent western area of the city. Fairwater, Heath, Birchgrove, Gabalfa, Mynachdy, Llandaff North, Llandaff, Llanishen, Radyr, Whitchurch & Tongwynlais, Rhiwbina, Thornhill, Lisvane and Cyncoed lie in an arc from the north-west to the north-east of the centre. Lisvane, Cyncoed, Radyr and Rhiwbina contain some of the most expensive housing in Wales. + +Further east lie the wards of Pontprennau and Old St Mellons, Rumney, Pentwyn, Llanrumney, Llanedeyrn and Trowbridge. The last four are largely public housing stock, although much new private housing is being built in Trowbridge. Pontprennau is the newest "suburb" of Cardiff, while Old St Mellons has a history going back to the 11th-century Norman Conquest. The region that may be called "Rural Cardiff" contains the villages of St Fagans, Creigiau, Pentyrch, Tongwynlais and Gwaelod-y-garth. In 2017, plans were approved for a new suburb of 7,000 homes between Radyr and St Fagans, known as Plasdŵr. St Fagans, home to the Museum of Welsh Life, is protected from further development. + +Since 2000, there has been a marked change of scale and building height in Cardiff, with the development of the city centre's first purpose-built high-rise apartments. Tall buildings have been built in the city centre and Cardiff Bay, and more are planned. + +Climate + +Cardiff, in the north temperate zone, has a maritime climate (Köppen: Cfb) marked by mild weather that is often cloudy, wet and windy. Summers tend to be warm and sunny, with average maxima between . Winters are fairly wet, but excessive rainfall as well as frost are rare. Spring and autumn feel similar and the temperatures tend to stay above – also the average annual daytime temperature. Rain is unpredictable at any time of year, although showers tend to be shorter in summer. + +The northern part of the county, being higher and inland, tends to be cooler and wetter than the city centre. + +Cardiff's maximum and minimum monthly temperatures average (July) and (February).For Wales, the temperatures average (July) and (February). + +Cardiff has 1,518 hours of sunshine in an average year (Wales 1,388.7 hours). Cardiff is sunniest in July, with an average 203.4 hours during the month (Wales 183.3 hours), and least sunny in December with 44.6 hours (Wales 38.5 hours). + +Cardiff experiences less rainfall than average for Wales. It falls on 146 days in an average year, with total annual rainfall of . Monthly rainfall patterns show that from October to January, average monthly rainfall in Cardiff exceeds each month, the wettest month being December with and the driest from April to June, with average monthly rainfall fairly consistent between . + +Demography + +After a period of decline in the 1970s and 1980s, Cardiff's population is growing again. It reached 362,400 in the 2021 census, compared to a 2011 census figure of 346,100. Between mid-2007 and mid-2008, Cardiff was the fastest-growing local authority in Wales, with growth of 1.2%. According to 2001 census data, Cardiff was the 21st largest urban area. The Cardiff Larger Urban Zone (a Eurostat definition including the Vale of Glamorgan and a number of local authorities in the Valleys) has 841,600 people, the 10th largest LUZ in the UK. The Cardiff and South Wales Valleys metropolitan area has a population of nearly 1.1 million. + +Official census estimates of the city's total population have been disputed. The city council published two articles arguing that the 2001 census seriously under-reported the population of Cardiff, and in particular the ethnic minority population of some inner city areas. + +The Welsh Government's official mid-year estimate of the population of the Cardiff local authority area in 2019 was 366,903. At the 2011, census the official population of the Cardiff Built Up Area (BUA) was put at 447,287. The BUA is not contiguous with the local authority boundary and aggregates data at a lower level; for Cardiff this includes the urban part of Cardiff, Penarth/Dinas Powys, Caerphilly and Pontypridd. + +Cardiff has an ethnically diverse population due to past trading connections, post-war immigration and large numbers of foreign students who attend university in the city. The ethnic make-up of Cardiff's population at the 2011 census was: 84.7% White, 1.6% mixed White and Black African/Caribbean, 0.7% mixed White and Asian, 0.6% mixed other, 8.1% Asian, 2.4% Black, 1.4% Arab and 0.6% other ethnic groups. This means almost 53,000 people from a non-white ethnic group reside in the city. This diversity, especially that of the city's long-established African and Arab communities, has been recorded in cultural exhibitions and events, along with books published on this subject. + +Health + +There are seven NHS hospitals in the city, the largest being the University Hospital of Wales, which is the third largest hospital in the UK and deals with most accidents and emergencies. The University Dental Hospital, which provides emergency treatment, is also located on this site. Llandough Hospital is located in the south of the city. + +St. David's Hospital, the city's newest hospital, built behind the former building, is located in Canton and provides services for the elderly and children. Cardiff Royal Infirmary is on Newport Road, near the city centre. The majority of this hospital was closed in 1999, but the west wing remained open for clinic services, genitourinary medicine and rehabilitation treatment. Rookwood Hospital and the Velindre Cancer Centre are also located within Cardiff. They are administered by the Cardiff and Vale University Health Board, with the exception of Velindre, which is run by a separate trust. Spire Healthcare, a private hospital, is in Pontprennau. + +Language + +Cardiff has a chequered linguistic history with Welsh, English, Latin, Norse and Norman French preponderant at different times. Welsh was the majority language in Cardiff from the 13th century until the city's explosive growth in the Victorian era. As late as 1850, five of the 12 Anglican churches within the current city boundaries conducted their services exclusively in Welsh, while only two worshipped exclusively in English. By 1891, the percentage of Welsh speakers had fallen to 27.9% and only Lisvane, Llanedeyrn and Creigiau remained as majority Welsh-speaking communities. The Welsh language became grouped around a small cluster of chapels and churches, the most notable of which is Tabernacl in the city centre, one of four UK churches chosen to hold official services to commemorate the new millennium. + +The city's first Welsh-language school (Ysgol Gymraeg Bryntaf) was established in the 1950s. Welsh has since regained ground. Aided by Welsh-medium education and migration from other parts of Wales, there are now many more Welsh speakers: their numbers doubled between the 1991 and 2011 censuses, from 18,071 (6.6%) to 36,735 (11.1%) residents aged three years and above. The LSOA (Lower Layer Super Output Area) with the highest percentage of Welsh speakers in the city centre is found in Canton, at 25.5%. The LSOA with the highest percentage of Welsh speakers in the whole of Cardiff is Whitchurch, at 26%. + +Cardiff City Council adopted a five-year Welsh-language strategy in 2017, aimed at increasing the number of Welsh speakers (aged 3+) in Cardiff by 15.9%, from 36,735 in 2011 to 42,584 residents by the 2021 Census. The ONS estimated that in December 2020, 89,900 (24.8%) of Cardiff's population could speak Welsh. + +In addition to English and Welsh, the diversity of Cardiff's population (including foreign students) means that many other languages are spoken. One study has found that Cardiff has speakers of at least 94 languages, with Somali, Urdu, Bengali and Arabic being the most commonly spoken foreign ones. + +The modern Cardiff accent is distinct from that of nearby South Wales Valleys. It is marked primarily by: +Substitution of by +here [hiːə] pronounced as in the broader form +The vowel of start may be realised as or even , so that Cardiff is pronounced . + +Language schools +Due to its diversity and large student population, more people now come to the city to learn English. Foreign students from Arab states and other European countries are a common sight on the streets of Cardiff. The British Council has an office in the city centre and there are six accredited schools in the area. + +Religion + +Since 1922, Cardiff has included Llandaff within its boundary, along with the Anglican Llandaff Cathedral, the parish church of Llandaff and the seat of the Bishop of Llandaff, head of the Church in Wales and the Diocese of Llandaff. + +There is a Roman Catholic cathedral in the city. Since 1916, Cardiff has been the seat of a Catholic archbishop, but there appears to have been a fall in the estimated Catholic population, with numbers in 2006 around 25,000 fewer than in 1980. Likewise, the Jewish population appears to have fallen – there are two synagogues in Cardiff, one in Cyncoed and one in Moira Terrace, as opposed to seven at the turn of the 20th century. There are several nonconformist chapels, an early 20th century Greek Orthodox church and 11 mosques. In the 2001 census, 66.9% of Cardiff's population described itself as Christian, a percentage point below the Welsh and UK averages. + +The oldest of the non-Christian communities in Wales is Judaism. Jews were not permitted to live in England and Wales between the 1290 Edict of Expulsion and the 17th century. A Welsh Jewish community was re-established in the 18th century. There was once a fairly substantial Jewish population in South Wales, most of which has disappeared. The Orthodox Jewish community congregations are consolidated in the Cardiff United Synagogue in Cyncoed, which was dedicated by Chief Rabbi Jonathan Sacks in 2003. The Cardiff Reform Synagogue is in Adamsdown. + +Cardiff's Muslim population is much above the Welsh average and the longest established in the UK, being started by Yemeni and Somali sailors settling in the 19th century. Cardiff now has over 11,000 Muslims with various national affiliations – nearly 52 per cent of the Muslim population in Wales. + +The proportion of Cardiff residents declaring themselves Hindu, Sikh and Jewish were all considerably higher than the Welsh averages, but lower than the UK figures. The city has had a Hindu community since Indian immigrants settled in the 1950s and 1960s. The first Hindu temple in the city was opened in Grangetown on 6 April 1979 on the site of an abandoned synagogue. The 25th anniversary of the founding was celebrated in September 2007 with a parade of over 3,000 people through the city centre, including Hindus from across the United Kingdom and members of Cardiff's other religious communities. There are over 2,000 Hindus in Cardiff, worshiping at three temples. + +In the 2001 census 18.8% of the city's population stated they had no religion, while 8.6% did not state a religion. + +Economy + +As the capital city of Wales, Cardiff is the main engine of growth in the Welsh economy. Though the population of Cardiff is about 10% of the Welsh population, the economy of Cardiff makes up nearly 20% of Welsh GDP and 40% of the city's workforce are daily in-commuters from the surrounding South Wales area. + +Industry has played a major part in Cardiff's development for many centuries. The main catalyst for its transformation from a small town into a big city was the demand for coal required in making iron and later steel, brought to sea by packhorse from Merthyr Tydfil. This was first achieved by building a canal from Merthyr ( above sea level) to the Taff Estuary at Cardiff. Eventually the Taff Vale Railway replaced the canal barges and massive marshalling yards sprang up as new docks were developed in Cardiff – all prompted by the soaring worldwide demand for coal from the South Wales valleys. + +At its peak, Cardiff's port area, known as Tiger Bay, became the busiest port in the world and – for some time – the world's most important coal port. In the years leading up to the First World War, more than 10 million tonnes of coal was exported annually from Cardiff Docks. In 1907, Cardiff's Coal Exchange was the first host to a business deal for a million pounds Sterling. The high demand for Welsh coal and specifically Welsh artificial fuel, named Patent Fuel, is shown by the numerous factories producing this fuel, with the same recipe, in the region of Cardiff. Most well known factories were the Star Patent fuel Co., the Crown Patent fuel, the Cardiff Patent fuel etc.After a period of decline, due to low demand on coal, Cardiff's port has started to grow again – over 3 million tonnes of cargo passed through the docks in 2007. + +Cardiff today is the main finance and business services centre in Wales, with strong representation of finance and business services in the local economy. This sector, combined with the public administration, education and health sectors, have accounted for about 75% of Cardiff's economic growth since 1991. The city was recently placed seventh overall in the top 50 European cities in the fDI 2008 Cities of the Future list published by the fDi magazine, and ranked seventh in terms of attracting foreign investment. Notable companies such as Legal & General, Admiral Insurance, HBOS, Zurich, ING Direct, The AA, Principality Building Society, 118118, British Gas, Brains, SWALEC Energy and BT, all operate large national or regional headquarters and contact centres in the city, some of them based in Cardiff's office towers such as Capital Tower and Brunel House. Other major employers include NHS Wales and the Senedd. On 1 March 2004, Cardiff was granted Fairtrade City status. + +Cardiff is one of the most popular tourist destinations in the United Kingdom, receiving 18.3 million visitors in 2010 and generating £852 million for the city's economy. One result is that one in five employees in Cardiff is based in the distribution, hotels and restaurants sector, highlighting the growing retail and tourism industries in the city. The city has many hotels of varying sizes and standards, providing almost 9,000 available beds. + +Cardiff is home to the Welsh media and a large media sector with BBC Cymru Wales, S4C and ITV Wales all having studios in the city. There is a large independent TV production industry sector of over 600 companies, employing around 6,000, with a turnover estimated at £350 million. Just to the north-west of the city, in Rhondda Cynon Taff, the first completely new film studios in the UK for 30 years are being built, to be named Valleywood. The studios are set to be the biggest in the UK. In 2011 the BBC completed the Roath Lock studios in Cardiff Bay to film dramas such as Casualty, Doctor Who, and Pobol y Cwm. + +Cardiff has several regeneration projects, such as St David's 2 Centre and surrounding areas of the city centre, and the £1.4 billion International Sports Village in Cardiff Bay, which played a part in the London 2012 Olympics. It features the only Olympic-standard swimming pool in Wales, the Cardiff International Pool, which opened on 12 January 2008. + +According to the Welsh Rugby Union, the Principality Stadium contributed £1 billion to the Welsh economy in the ten years after it opened in 1999, with around 85% of that staying in the Cardiff area. + +Shopping + +Most of Cardiff's shopping portfolio is in the city centre around Queen Street, St Mary Street and High Street, with large suburban retail parks in Cardiff Bay, Culverhouse Cross, Leckwith, Newport Road and Pontprennau, together with markets in the city centre and Splott. A £675 million regeneration programme for Cardiff's St. David's Centre was completed in 2009, providing a total of of shopping space, making it one of the largest shopping centres in the United Kingdom. The centre was named the international shopping centre of the year in 2010 by Retail Leisure International (RLI). + +The Castle Quarter is a commercial area in the north of the city centre, which includes some of Cardiff's Victorian and Edwardian arcades: Castle Arcade, Morgan Arcade and Royal Arcade, and principal shopping streets: St Mary Street, High Street, The Hayes, and Queen Street. + +Transport + +Rail + +Cardiff Central railway station is the largest railway station in Wales, with nine platforms coping with over 12.5 million passengers a year. It provides direct services to Bridgend and Newport, long-distance, cross-Wales services to Wrexham and Holyhead, and services to Bristol, Birmingham, Manchester and London. Cardiff Central Station is situated within the southern border of what was known Temperance Town, a former residential area within central Cardiff. + +Cardiff Queen Street railway station is the second busiest in Wales and the hub for the Valley Lines services that connect the South Wales Valleys and the Cardiff suburbs with the city centre. It is located at the eastern end of the city centre and provides services to Cardiff Bay. Cardiff has a suburban rail system known as the Valleys & Cardiff Local Routes, operated by Transport for Wales. There are eight lines that serve 20 stations in the city, 26 in the wider urban area (including Taffs Well, Penarth and Dinas Powys) and more than 60 in the South Wales valleys and the Vale of Glamorgan. + +Metro +The South Wales Metro is an integrated public transport system under development in south-east Wales, centered on Cardiff. The project is to include the electrification of some of the existing railway lines. Four lines are under construction with a further three planned. The first lines will link and to , , and , with plans to also serve , St Mellons and Porth Teigr. Alongside this, current commuter services will be improved with a near-tripling in capacity on some routes to and . + +Air + +Domestic and international air links to Cardiff and South & West Wales are provided from Cardiff Airport (CWL), the only international airport in Wales. The airport lies in the village of Rhoose, west of the city. There are regular bus services linking the airport with Cardiff city centre, and a train service from Rhoose Cardiff International Airport railway station to Cardiff Central. + +Road and bus + +The M4 motorway connects Cardiff with Swansea to the west and Newport and London to the east, with four junctions on the M4, including one with the A48(M). The A470 provides an important link from the city to the Heads of the Valleys road. When completed, the A4232 – also known as the Peripheral Distributor Road – will form part of the Cardiff ring-road system, along with the M4 motorway between junctions 30 and 33. + +Cardiff has a comprehensive bus network, whose providers include the municipal bus company Cardiff Bus (routes within the city and to Newport, Barry and Penarth), Adventure Travel (cross-city and to Cardiff Airport), Stagecoach South Wales (to the South Wales Valleys) and First Cymru (to Cowbridge and Bridgend). National Express and Megabus provides direct services to major cities such as Bristol, London, Newcastle upon Tyne and Manchester. + +Cycle + +The Taff Trail is a walking and cycle path running for between Cardiff Bay and Brecon in the Brecon Beacons National Park. It runs through Bute Park, Sophia Gardens and many other green areas within Cardiff. It is possible to cycle the entire distance of the Trail almost completely off-road, as it largely follows the River Taff and many of the disused railways of the Glamorganshire valleys. + +Nextbike have operated a public bike-hire scheme in the city since March 2018. + +Water +The Aquabus water taxi runs every hour between the city centre (Taff Mead Embankment) and Cardiff Bay (Mermaid Quay), and between Cardiff Bay and Penarth Cardiff Bay Barrage. Throughout the year, Cardiff Waterbus sail between the Pierhead on The Waterfront and the Penarth end of the Cardiff Bay Barrage with short sightseeing cruises. + +Between March and October boats depart from Cardiff Bay for Flat Holm Island. The PS Waverley and MV Balmoral sail from Britannia Quay (in Roath Basin) to various destinations in the Bristol Channel. + +Telecommunications + +029 is the current telephone dialling code for Cardiff,as well as for the neighbouring towns of Penarth, Dinas Powys and Caerphilly. The dialling code is optional when dialling within the area: one can dial between any two phones within the 029 code using only the eight-digit local number. + +Prior to the Big Number Change on 22 April 2000 the area had shorter, six-digit local numbers with an area code of 01222. This was 0222 before May 1995, derived from 0 (indicating it was a trunk call), 22 (CA on a telephone pad, for CArdiff) and 2 (as 220 was used for CAmbridge and 221 for BAth). Before the introduction of automated trunk call dialling, non-local numbers were accessed through a system of manual telephone exchanges, in common with rest if the United Kingdom. + +There remains a common misconception that local numbers are still six digits long and that the code is 02920, even though there are newer Cardiff numbers in the ranges (029) 21xx xxxx and (029) 22xx xxxx. + +Education + +Cardiff is home to four major institutions of higher education: Cardiff University, Cardiff Metropolitan University, University of South Wales and the Royal Welsh College of Music & Drama. + +Cardiff University was founded by a royal charter in 1883 as the University College of South Wales and Monmouthshire, is a member of the Russell Group of leading research led universities, having most of its campus in Cathays and the city centre. Cardiff Metropolitan University (formerly UWIC) has campuses in the Llandaff, Cyncoed and city centre areas, and is part of the confederal University of Wales. The Royal Welsh College of Music & Drama is a conservatoire established in 1949 and is based in the grounds of Cardiff Castle. The University of South Wales's Cardiff campus, Atrium, is home to the Cardiff School of Creative & Cultural Industries and is located in the city centre. + +The total number of higher education students in the city is around 43,900. The city also has two further education colleges: Cardiff and Vale College and St David's College. The former is the result of a merger, completed in August 2011, between Coleg Glan Hafren and Barry College. Further education is also offered at most high schools in the city. + +Cardiff has three state nursery schools (one bilingual), 98 state primary schools (two bilingual, fifteen Welsh medium), and 19 state secondary schools (three Welsh medium). There are also several independent schools in the city, including St John's College, Llandaff Cathedral School, Cardiff Sixth Form College, Kings Monkton School and Howell's School, a single-sex girls' school (until sixth form). In 2013 Cardiff Sixth Form College came top of the independent senior schools in the UK, which were based on the percentage of A* and A at Advanced Level. Also in the top 100 were St John's College and Howell's School. + +Notable schools include Whitchurch High School (the largest secondary school in Wales), Fitzalan High School (one of the most multi-cultural state schools in the UK), and Ysgol Gyfun Gymraeg Glantaf (the largest Welsh medium secondary school in Wales). + +As well as academic institutions, Cardiff is also home to other educational and learning organisations such as Techniquest, a hands-on science discovery centre that now has franchises throughout Wales, and is part of the Wales Gene Park in collaboration with Cardiff University, NHS Wales and the Welsh Development Agency (WDA). Cardiff is also home of the largest regional office of the International Baccalaureate Organisation (IBO). This office is home to the organisation's curriculum and assessment centre, which is responsible for overseeing the creation and grading of various IBDP assessments. + +Landmarks and attractions + + +Cardiff has many landmark buildings such as the Principality Stadium, Pierhead Building, the Welsh National Museum and the Senedd building, the home of the Welsh Parliament. Cardiff is also famous for Cardiff Castle, St David's Hall, Llandaff Cathedral and the Wales Millennium Centre. + +Cardiff Castle is a major tourist attraction in the city and is situated in the heart of the city centre. The National History Museum at St Fagans in Cardiff is a large open-air museum housing dozens of buildings from throughout Welsh history that have been moved to the site in Cardiff. The Civic Centre in Cathays Park comprises a collection of Edwardian buildings such as the City Hall, National Museum and Gallery of Wales, Cardiff Crown Court, and buildings forming part of Cardiff University, together with more modern civic buildings. These buildings are laid out around the Queen Alexandra Gardens, a formal park which contains the Welsh National War Memorial and a number of other, smaller memorials. + +In addition to Cardiff Castle, Castell Coch is a castle in Tongwynlais, in the north of the city. The current castle is an elaborately decorated Victorian folly designed by William Burges for the Marquess and built in the 1870s, as an occasional retreat. However, the Victorian castle stands on the footings of a much older medieval castle possibly built by Ifor Bach, a regional baron with links to Cardiff Castle also. The exterior has become a popular location for film and television productions. It rarely fulfilled its intended role as a retreat for the Butes, who seldom stayed there. For the Marquess, the pleasure had been in its creation, a pleasure lost following Burges's death in 1881. + +Cardiff claims the largest concentration of castles of any city in the world. As well as Cardiff Castle and Castell Coch, there are the remains of two motte-and-bailey castles in Morganstown and Rhiwbina, known as Morganstown Castle Mound and Twmpath Castle or Twmpath Motte (also known as ) respectively. Twmpath being a Welsh word for a small mound), which along with a castle at Whitchurch (known as Treoda and destroyed by housing in the 1960s) formed an arc of fortifications which divided the Norman lordship from the Welsh lordship of Senghenydd. Further up the Cefn Cibwr ridge on the boundary with Caerphilly there is also another ruined castle, known as Morgraig Castle (). Archaeological evidence suggests this castle was never finished, and it is debated whether the fortification was of Norman or Welsh origin. The concentration of castles indicates the moveable nature of the border between the Norman lordship of Glamorgan, centred at Cardiff, and its Welsh neighbours to the north. + +There is also the ruined Llandaff Bishop's Palace, also known as Llandaff Castle, which was the home of the medieval bishops, which was destroyed about 1403–1404 by the Welsh leader Owain Glyndŵr. Now only the ruined gatehouse remains. Not strictly a castle in the historical sense, Saint Fagans Castle is a preserved 17th-century manor house, once the seat of the Earls of Plymouth. + +Other major tourist attractions are the Cardiff Bay regeneration sites, which include the recently opened Wales Millennium Centre and the Senedd building, and many other cultural and sites of interest, including the Cardiff Bay Barrage and the famous Coal Exchange. The New Theatre was founded in 1906 and refurbished in the 1980s. Until the opening of the Wales Millennium Centre in 2004, it was the premier venue in Wales for touring theatre and dance companies. Other venues popular for concerts and sporting events include Cardiff International Arena, St David's Hall and the Principality Stadium. Cardiff Story, a museum documenting the city's history, has been open to the public since the spring of 2011. + +Cardiff has over 1,000 listed buildings, ranging from the more prominent buildings such as the castles, to smaller buildings, houses and structures. Cathedral Road was developed by the 3rd Marquis of Bute and is lined by fine villas, some backing on to Sophia Gardens. + +Cardiff has walks of special interest for tourists and ramblers alike, such as the Centenary Walk, which runs for within Cardiff city centre. This route passes through many of Cardiff's landmarks and historic buildings. The Animal Wall, designed by William Burges in 1866, marks the south edge of Bute Park on Castle Street. It bears 15 carved animal statues. + +Culture and recreation + +Cardiff has many cultural sites varying from the historical Cardiff Castle and out of town Castell Coch to the more modern Wales Millennium Centre and Cardiff Bay. Cardiff was a finalist in the European Capital of Culture 2008. In recent years Cardiff has grown in stature as a tourist destination, with recent accolades including Cardiff being voted the eighth favourite UK city by readers of the Guardian. + +The city was also listed as one of the top 10 destinations in the UK on the official British tourist boards website Visit Britain, and US travel guide Frommers have listed Cardiff as one of 13 top destinations worldwide for 2008. Annual events in Cardiff that have become regular appearances in Cardiff's calendar include Sparks in the Park, The Great British Cheese Festival, Pride Cymru (formerly Cardiff Mardi Gras), Cardiff Winter Wonderland, Cardiff Festival and Made in Roath. + +Music and performing arts + +A large number of concerts are held in the city, the larger ones at St David's Hall, Cardiff International Arena and occasionally the Principality Stadium. A number of festivals are also held in Cardiff, the largest being the Cardiff Big Weekend Festival, held annually in the city centre in the summer and playing host to free musical performances (from artists such as Ash, Jimmy Cliff, Cerys Matthews, the Fun Loving Criminals, Soul II Soul and the Magic Numbers), fairground rides and cultural events such as a Children's Festival that takes place in the grounds of Cardiff Castle. The annual festival claims to be the UK's largest free outdoor festival, attracting over 250,000 visitors in 2007. + +Cardiff hosted the National Eisteddfod in 1883, 1899, 1938, 1960, 1978, 2008 and 2018. Cardiff is unique in Wales in having two permanent stone circles used by the Gorsedd of Bards during Eisteddfodau. The original circle stands in Gorsedd Gardens in front of the National Museum while its 1978 replacement is situated in Bute Park. Since 1983, Cardiff has hosted the BBC Cardiff Singer of the World competition, a world-renowned event on the opera calendar which is held every two years. The city also hosts smaller events. + +The Wales Millennium Centre hosts performances of opera, ballet, dance, comedy, musicals and is home to the BBC National Orchestra of Wales. St David's Hall (which hosts the Singer of the World competition) has regular performances of classical music and ballet as well as music of other genres. The largest of Cardiff's theatres is the New Theatre, situated in the city centre just off Queen Street. Other such venues include the Sherman Theatre, Chapter Arts Centre and the Gate Arts Centre. + +The Cardiff music scene is established and wide-ranging: home to the BBC National Orchestra of Wales and the Welsh National Opera; has produced several leading acts; has acted as a springboard for Welsh bands to become famous. Acts hailing from Cardiff include Charlotte Church, Shirley Bassey, Iwan Rheon, the Oppressed, Kids In Glass Houses, Los Campesinos, the Hot Puppies, the School, We're No Heroes, Budgie and Shakin' Stevens. Also, performers such as the Automatic, Manic Street Preachers, Lostprophets, Underworld, Super Furry Animals, Catatonia and Bullet for My Valentine have links with the city and are associated with the Cardiff music scene. In 2010, Cardiff was named the UK's second "most musical" city by PRS for Music. + +Visual arts + +Cardiff has held a photomarathon in the city each year since 2004, in which photographers compete to take the best 12 pictures of 12 previously unknown topics in 12 hours. An exhibition of winners and other entries is held in June/July each year. + +Sporting venues +Sporting venues include the Principality Stadium – the national stadium and home of the Wales national rugby union team – Sophia Gardens for Glamorgan County Cricket Club, Cardiff City Stadium for Cardiff City F.C. and the Wales football team, Cardiff International Sports Stadium, home of Cardiff Amateur Athletic Club, Cardiff Arms Park for Cardiff Blues and Cardiff RFC rugby union teams, and Ice Arena Wales for Cardiff Devils ice hockey team. It hosted the 1958 British Empire and Commonwealth Games and was dubbed European City of Sport for its role in international sporting events in 2009 and again in 2014. The Principality Stadium hosted 11 football matches during the 2012 Summer Olympics, including the opening event and the men's bronze medal match. + +Recreation + +Cardiff has strong nightlife. Most clubs and bars are situated in the city centre, especially St Mary Street. More recently Cardiff Bay has built up a strong night scene, with many modern bars and restaurants. The Brewery Quarter on St Mary Street is a recently developed venue for bars and restaurant with a central courtyard. Charles Street is also a popular part of the city. + +Cardiff is known for its extensive parks and other green spaces covering around 10% of the city's total area. Cardiff's main park, Bute Park (which was formerly the castle grounds) extends northwards from the top of one of Cardiff's main shopping street (Queen Street); when combined with the adjacent Llandaff Fields and Pontcanna Fields to the north-west it produces a massive open space skirting the River Taff. Other popular parks include Roath Park in the north, donated to the city by the 3rd Marquess of Bute in 1887, which includes a popular boating lake; Victoria Park, Cardiff's first official park; and Thompson's Park, formerly home to an aviary removed in the 1970s. Wild open spaces include Howardian Local Nature Reserve, of the lower Rhymney valley in Penylan noted for its orchids, and Forest Farm Country Park, over along the River Taff in Whitchurch. + +Cardiff is one of the top ten retail destinations in the UK with Queen Street and St. Mary Street as the two main shopping streets with the three shopping arcades, St. David's Centre, Queens Arcade and the Capitol Centre. The current expansion of St. David's Centre as part of the St David's 2 project has made it one of the largest shopping centres in the UK. As well as the modern shopping arcades, the city is home to Victorian shopping centres, such as High Street Arcade, Castle Arcade, Wyndham Arcade, Royal Arcade and Morgan Arcade. Also of note is The Hayes, home to Spillers Records, the world's oldest record shop. Cardiff has a number of markets, including the vast Victorian indoor Cardiff Central Market and the newly established Riverside Community Market, which specialises in locally produced organic produce. Several out-of-town retail parks exist, such as Newport Road, Culverhouse Cross, Cardiff Gate and Cardiff Bay. + +Media + +Cardiff is the Welsh base for the main national broadcasters (BBC Cymru Wales, ITV Wales and S4C). A locally based television station, Made in Cardiff, is also based in the city centre. Major filming studios in Cardiff include the BBC's Roath Lock Studios and Pinewood Studios Wales. + +Several contemporary television programmes and films are filmed in and/or set in Cardiff such as Casualty, Doctor Who, The Sarah Jane Adventures, Torchwood, Merlin, Class, The Valleys, Upstairs Downstairs, A Discovery of Witches, His Dark Materials, Being Human, The Story of Tracy Beaker, Wizards vs Aliens, Sex Education and Sherlock. + +The main local newspaper is the South Wales Echo; the national paper is the Western Mail. Both are based in Park Street in the city centre. Capital Times, Echo Extra and the South Wales edition of Metro are also based and distributed in the city. There are several magazines, including Primary Times and a monthly papur bro, and a Welsh-language community newsletter called Y Dinesydd (The Citizen). Radio stations serving the city and based in Cardiff include Capital South Wales, Heart South Wales, BBC Radio Wales, BBC Radio Cymru, Nation Radio Wales, Radio Cardiff, Smooth Wales and Xpress Radio. + +The Principality Stadium was one of the first six British landmarks to be fully mapped on Google Street View as a 360-degree virtual tour. + +Sport + +Cardiff hosts many high-profile sporting events at local, national and international level and in recognition of the city's commitment to sport for all was awarded the title of European Capital of Sport 2014. Organised sports have been held in the city since the early 19th century. national home sporting fixtures are nearly always played in the city. All Wales' multi-sports agencies and many of the country's sports governing bodies have their headquarters in Cardiff and the city's many top quality venues have attracted world-famous sports events, sometimes unrelated to Cardiff or to Wales. In 2008/09, 61% of Cardiff residents regularly participated in sport and active recreation, the highest percentage in ll 22 local authorities in Wales. + +Rugby union fans around the world have long been familiar with the old National Stadium, Cardiff Arms Park, and its successor the Principality Stadium, which hosted the FA Cup for six years (from 2001 to 2006) it took to rebuild Wembley Stadium. In 2009, Cardiff hosted the first Ashes cricket test between England and Australia to be held in Wales. Cardiff hosted eight football matches of the London 2012 Olympics. + +Cardiff City F.C. (founded 1899 as Riverside AFC) played their home games at Ninian Park from 1910 until the end of the 2008–09 season. The club's new home is the Cardiff City Stadium, which they initially rented to the Cardiff Blues, the city's professional rugby union team, the Blues returning to the Arms Park in 2012. Cardiff City have played in the English Football League since the 1920–21 season, climbing to Division 1 after one season. Cardiff City are the only non-English team to have won the FA Cup, beating Arsenal in the 1927 final at Wembley Stadium. They were runners up to Portsmouth in the 2008 final, losing 1–0 at the new Wembley Stadium. In the 2013/14 and 2018/19 seasons Cardiff City played in the English Premier League. + +Cardiff Metropolitan University F.C. of the Athletic Union of Cardiff Metropolitan University, based in Cyncoed, play in the Cymru Premier, having been promoted from Welsh League Division One in 2016. They were winners of the Welsh League Cup for the 2018–19 season. + +Cardiff has numerous smaller clubs including Bridgend Street A.F.C., Caerau (Ely) A.F.C., Cardiff Corinthians F.C., Cardiff Grange Harlequins A.F.C., and Ely Rangers A.F.C., which all play in the Welsh football league system. + +In addition to men's football teams Cardiff City Ladies of the FA Women's Premier League Southern Division are based in the city. Teams in the Welsh Premier Women's Football League are Cardiff Met. Ladies, Cyncoed Ladies and Cardiff City. + +During the 1990s, London-based football club Wimbledon FC expressed interest in relocating to Cardiff, having been without a home of their own since exiting Plough Lane stadium in 1991 and sharing with Crystal Palace FC at Selhurst Park. The relocation of the club to Cardiff did not happen; in 2003, the club moved to Milton Keynes and a year later rebranded as Milton Keynes Dons. + +Cardiff Arms Park (), in central Cardiff, is among the world's most famous venues—being the scene of three Welsh Grand Slams in the 1970s (1971, 1976 and 1978) and six Five Nations titles in nine years—and was the venue for Wales' games in the 1991 Rugby World Cup. The Arms Park has a sporting history dating back to at least the 1850s, when Cardiff Cricket Club (formed 1819) relocated to the site. The ground was donated to Cardiff CC in 1867 by the Marquess of Bute. Cardiff Cricket Club shared the ground with Cardiff Rugby Football Club (founded 1876) — forming Cardiff Athletic Club between them — until 1966, when the cricket section moved to Sophia Gardens. Cardiff Athletic Club and the Welsh Rugby Union established two stadia on the site—Cardiff RFC played at their stadium at the northern end of the site, and the Wales national rugby union team played international matches at the National Stadium, Cardiff Arms Park, which opened in 1970. The National Stadium was replaced by the 74,500 capacity Millennium Stadium () in 1999—in time for the 1999 Rugby World Cup—and is home stadium to the Wales national rugby and football teams for international matches. In addition to Wales' Six Nations Championship and other international games, the Principality Stadium held four matches in the 2007 Rugby World Cup and six FA Cup finals (from the 2001–02 to 2005–06 seasons) while Wembley Stadium was being rebuilt. + +Cardiff Cricket Club was formed in 1819 and Glamorgan County Cricket Club has competed as a first-class county since 1921. Its headquarters and ground is the SWALEC Stadium, Sophia Gardens, since moving from Cardiff Arms Park in 1966. The Sophia Gardens stadium underwent multimillion-pound improvements since being selected to host the first "England" v Australia Test match of the 2009 Ashes series. The Hundred franchise team Welsh Fire is also based at the stadium. + +Cardiff has a long association with boxing, from 'Peerless' Jim Driscoll — born in Cardiff in 1880 — to more recent, high-profile fights staged in the city. These include the WBC Lennox Lewis vs. Frank Bruno heavyweight championship fight at the Arms Park in 1993, and many of Joe Calzaghe's fights, between 2003 and 2007. + +Cardiff's professional ice hockey team, the Cardiff Devils, plays in the 3,000-seat Ice Arena Wales in the Cardiff International Sports Village. It plays in the 12-team professional Elite Ice Hockey League. Founded in 1986, it was one of the most successful British teams in the 1990s. + +Cardiff's only American-flag football team is the Hurricanes. It won the British Championship in 2014 after falling short by 2 points in a quarter-final to eventual winners, the London Rebels, the previous year. It is based at Roath Recreational Ground. + +The 1958 Commonwealth Games were hosted by Cardiff. These involved 1,130 athletes from 35 national teams competing in 94 events. One of the venues for those Games—The Wales Empire Swimming Pool—was demolished in 1998 to make way for the Principality Stadium. The GBP32m Cardiff International Pool in Cardiff Bay, opened to the public on 12 January 2008 — part of the GBP1bn International Sports Village (ISV) — is the only Olympic-standard swimming pool in Wales. When complete, the ISV complex will provide Olympic standard facilities for sports including boxing and fencing, gymnastics, judo, white water events (including canoeing and kayaking) and wrestling as well as a snow dome with real snow for skiing and snowboarding, an arena for public ice skating and ice hockey and a hotel. Some of the sports facilities at the ISV were to be used as training venues for the London 2012 Olympics. + +The Principality Stadium hosts motor-sport events such as the World Rally Championship, as part of Wales Rally GB. The first indoor special stages of the World Rally Championship were held at the Principality Stadium in September 2005 and have been an annual event since. The British Speedway Grand Prix, one of the World Championship events, is held at the Principality Stadium. While the track—a temporary, purpose built, shale oval—is not universally loved, the venue is considered the best of the World Championship's 11 rounds. + +The Cardiff International Sports Stadium, opened 19 January 2009, replacing the Cardiff Athletics Stadium, demolished to make way for the Cardiff City Stadium. It has a 4,953 capacity as a multi sport/special event venue, offering certificated international track and field athletics facilities, including an international standard external throws area. The stadium houses the Headquarters of Welsh Athletics, the sport's governing body for Wales. The city's indoor track and field athletics sports venue is the National Indoor Athletics Centre, an international athletics and multi sports centre at the University of Wales Institute, Cardiff Campus, Cyncoed. + +Notable people + +Many notable people have hailed from Cardiff, ranging from historical figures such as the 12th-century Welsh leader Ifor Bach to more recent figures such as Roald Dahl, Ken Follett, Griff Rhys Jones, Catrin Dafydd, and the former Blue Peter presenter Gethin Jones. + +Notable actors include Ioan Gruffudd (Fantastic 4), Iwan Rheon (Game of Thrones) and Matthew Rhys (The Americans). + +Also notable is Siân Grigg, BAFTA winner and Oscar nominated Hollywood make-up artist. + +The city has been the birthplace of sports stars such as Tanni Grey-Thompson and Colin Jackson, as well as many Premier League, Football League and international footballers, such as Craig Bellamy, Gareth Bale, Ryan Giggs, Joe Ledley, and former managers of the Wales national football team Terry Yorath and John Toshack. International rugby league players from Cardiff include Frank Whitcombe, Billy Boston, David Willicombe and Colin Dixon. International rugby union players include Sam Warburton, Jamie Roberts, Jamie Robinson, Nicky Robinson, Rhys Patchell, and baseball internationals include George Whitcombe and Ted Peterson. + +Saint Teilo ( – 9 February ) is the patron saint of Cardiff. He was a British Christian monk, bishop, and founder of monasteries and churches. Reputed to be a cousin, friend, and disciple of Saint David, he was Bishop of Llandaff and founder of the first church at Llandaff Cathedral, where his tomb is. His Saint's Day is 9 February. + +Cardiff is also well known for its musicians. Ivor Novello inspired the Ivor Novello Awards. Idloes Owen, founder of the Welsh National Opera, lived in Llandaff. Dame Shirley Bassey was born and raised in Cardiff. Charlotte Church is famous as a crossover classical/pop singer. Shakin' Stevens was one of the top-selling male artists in the UK during the 1980s. Tigertailz, a popular glam metal act in the 1980s, also hailed from Cardiff. A number of Cardiff-based bands, such as Catatonia and Super Furry Animals, were popular in the 1990s. + +Twinning +Luhansk, Ukraine +Hordaland county, Norway +Sucre, Bolivia +Nantes, France +Stuttgart, Germany +Xiamen, China +Lima, Peru + +Namesakes +Cardiff-by-the-Sea in Encinitas, California and Cardiff, Alabama were both named after Cardiff in Wales. + +Diplomatic presence + +A total of 28 countries have a diplomatic presence in Cardiff. Many of these, such as Germany, Italy, Switzerland, Denmark, Canada, Thailand and the Czech Republic, are represented by honorary consulates. The United States Embassy to the UK operates a satellite office. + +Freedom of the City +The following people and military units have received the Freedom of the City of Cardiff; they are listed with the date that they received the honour. + +Individuals + +Military units +The Welch Regiment: 10 June 1944 +The Welsh Guards: 27 April 1957 +The Royal Regiment of Wales: 11 June 1969 +The Royal Welch Fusiliers: 7 November 1973 +The 1st The Queen's Dragoon Guards: 29 July 1985 +HMS Cardiff, RN: 3 February 1988 +The Merchant Navy Association (Wales): 3 September 2001 +203 (Welsh) Field Hospital (Volunteers) RAMC: 21 April 2014 +HMS Dragon, RN: 18 May 2014 + +See also +Cardiff city centre +Cardiff music scene +List of cultural venues in Cardiff +List of parliamentary constituencies in South Glamorgan +List of places in Cardiff +List of places of worship in Cardiff +List of streets and squares in Cardiff +Senedd + +References + +External links + +Cardiff Council site +Visit Cardiff +Cardiff Records: the full text of the edition of historical records for Cardiff, edited by J. H. Matthews (1898–1905). Part of British History Online. + +Cardiff +Capital cities in the United Kingdom +Cities in Wales +Populated coastal places in Wales +Counties of Wales +Glamorgan +Port cities and towns in Wales +Principal areas of Wales +County towns in Wales +Rally GB +50s establishments +Populated places established in the 1st century +Charles John Huffam Dickens (; 7 February 1812 – 9 June 1870) was an English novelist and social critic who created some of the world's best-known fictional characters, and is regarded by many as the greatest novelist of the Victorian era. His works enjoyed unprecedented popularity during his lifetime and, by the 20th century, critics and scholars had recognised him as a literary genius. His novels and short stories are widely read today. + +Born in Portsmouth, Dickens left school at the age of 12 to work in a boot-blacking factory when his father John was incarcerated in a debtors' prison. After three years he returned to school, before he began his literary career as a journalist. Dickens edited a weekly journal for 20 years, wrote 15 novels, five novellas, hundreds of short stories and non-fiction articles, lectured and performed readings extensively, was an indefatigable letter writer, and campaigned vigorously for children's rights, for education, and for other social reforms. + +Dickens's literary success began with the 1836 serial publication of The Pickwick Papers, a publishing phenomenon—thanks largely to the introduction of the character Sam Weller in the fourth episode—that sparked Pickwick merchandise and spin-offs. Within a few years Dickens had become an international literary celebrity, famous for his humour, satire and keen observation of character and society. His novels, most of them published in monthly or weekly installments, pioneered the serial publication of narrative fiction, which became the dominant Victorian mode for novel publication. Cliffhanger endings in his serial publications kept readers in suspense. The instalment format allowed Dickens to evaluate his audience's reaction, and he often modified his plot and character development based on such feedback. For example, when his wife's chiropodist expressed distress at the way Miss Mowcher in David Copperfield seemed to reflect her own disabilities, Dickens improved the character with positive features. His plots were carefully constructed and he often wove elements from topical events into his narratives. Masses of the illiterate poor would individually pay a halfpenny to have each new monthly episode read to them, opening up and inspiring a new class of readers. + +His 1843 novella A Christmas Carol remains especially popular and continues to inspire adaptations in every artistic genre. Oliver Twist and Great Expectations are also frequently adapted and, like many of his novels, evoke images of early Victorian London. His 1859 novel A Tale of Two Cities (set in London and Paris) is his best-known work of historical fiction. The most famous celebrity of his era, he undertook, in response to public demand, a series of public reading tours in the later part of his career. The term Dickensian is used to describe something that is reminiscent of Dickens and his writings, such as poor social or working conditions, or comically repulsive characters. + +Early life + +Charles Dickens was born on 7 February 1812 at 1 Mile End Terrace (now 393 Commercial Road), Landport in Portsea Island (Portsmouth), Hampshire, the second of eight children of Elizabeth Dickens (née Barrow; 1789–1863) and John Dickens (1785–1851). His father was a clerk in the Navy Pay Office and was temporarily stationed in the district. He asked Christopher Huffam, rigger to His Majesty's Navy, gentleman, and head of an established firm, to act as godfather to Charles. Huffam is thought to be the inspiration for Paul Dombey, the owner of a shipping company in Dickens's novel Dombey and Son (1848). + +In January 1815, John Dickens was called back to London, and the family moved to Norfolk Street, Fitzrovia. When Charles was four, they relocated to Sheerness and thence to Chatham, Kent, where he spent his formative years until the age of 11. His early life seems to have been idyllic, though he thought himself a "very small and not-over-particularly-taken-care-of boy". + +Charles spent time outdoors, but also read voraciously, including the picaresque novels of Tobias Smollett and Henry Fielding, as well as Robinson Crusoe and Gil Blas. He read and re-read The Arabian Nights and the Collected Farces of Elizabeth Inchbald. At the age of 7 he first saw Joseph Grimaldi—the father of modern clowning—perform at the Star Theatre, Rochester. He later imitated Grimaldi's clowning on several occasions, and would also edit the Memoirs of Joseph Grimaldi. He retained poignant memories of childhood, helped by an excellent memory of people and events, which he used in his writing. His father's brief work as a clerk in the Navy Pay Office afforded him a few years of private education, first at a dame school and then at a school run by William Giles, a dissenter, in Chatham. + +This period came to an end in June 1822, when John Dickens was recalled to Navy Pay Office headquarters at Somerset House and the family (except for Charles, who stayed behind to finish his final term at school) moved to Camden Town in London. The family had left Kent amidst rapidly mounting debts and, living beyond his means, John Dickens was forced by his creditors into the Marshalsea debtors' prison in Southwark, London in 1824. His wife and youngest children joined him there, as was the practice at the time. Charles, then 12 years old, boarded with Elizabeth Roylance, a family friend, at 112 College Place, Camden Town. Mrs Roylance was "a reduced impoverished old lady, long known to our family", whom Dickens later immortalised, "with a few alterations and embellishments", as "Mrs Pipchin" in Dombey and Son. Later, he lived in a back-attic in the house of an agent for the Insolvent Court, Archibald Russell, "a fat, good-natured, kind old gentleman ... with a quiet old wife" and lame son, in Lant Street in Southwark. They provided the inspiration for the Garlands in The Old Curiosity Shop. + +On Sundays – with his sister Frances, free from her studies at the Royal Academy of Music – he spent the day at the Marshalsea. Dickens later used the prison as a setting in Little Dorrit. To pay for his board and to help his family, Dickens was forced to leave school and work ten-hour days at Warren's Blacking Warehouse, on Hungerford Stairs, near the present Charing Cross railway station, where he earned six shillings a week pasting labels on pots of boot blacking. The strenuous and often harsh working conditions made a lasting impression on Dickens and later influenced his fiction and essays, becoming the foundation of his interest in the reform of socio-economic and labour conditions, the rigours of which he believed were unfairly borne by the poor. He later wrote that he wondered "how I could have been so easily cast away at such an age". As he recalled to John Forster (from Life of Charles Dickens): + +When the warehouse was moved to Chandos Street in the smart, busy district of Covent Garden, the boys worked in a room in which the window gave onto the street. Small audiences gathered and watched them at work – in Dickens's biographer Simon Callow's estimation, the public display was "a new refinement added to his misery". + +A few months after his imprisonment, John Dickens's mother, Elizabeth Dickens, died and bequeathed him £450. On the expectation of this legacy, Dickens was released from prison. Under the Insolvent Debtors Act, Dickens arranged for payment of his creditors, and he and his family left the Marshalsea, for the home of Mrs Roylance. + +Charles's mother, Elizabeth Dickens, did not immediately support his removal from the boot-blacking warehouse. This influenced Dickens's view that a father should rule the family and a mother find her proper sphere inside the home: "I never afterwards forgot, I never shall forget, I never can forget, that my mother was warm for my being sent back." His mother's failure to request his return was a factor in his dissatisfied attitude towards women. + +Righteous indignation stemming from his own situation and the conditions under which working-class people lived became major themes of his works, and it was this unhappy period in his youth to which he alluded in his favourite, and most autobiographical, novel, David Copperfield: "I had no advice, no counsel, no encouragement, no consolation, no assistance, no support, of any kind, from anyone, that I can call to mind, as I hope to go to heaven!" + +Dickens was eventually sent to the Wellington House Academy in Camden Town, where he remained until March 1827, having spent about two years there. He did not consider it to be a good school: "Much of the haphazard, desultory teaching, poor discipline punctuated by the headmaster's sadistic brutality, the seedy ushers and general run-down atmosphere, are embodied in Mr Creakle's Establishment in David Copperfield." + +Dickens worked at the law office of Ellis and Blackmore, attorneys, of Holborn Court, Gray's Inn, as a junior clerk from May 1827 to November 1828. He was a gifted mimic and impersonated those around him: clients, lawyers and clerks. He went to theatres obsessively: he claimed that for at least three years he went to the theatre every day. His favourite actor was Charles Mathews and Dickens learnt his "monopolylogues" (farces in which Mathews played every character) by heart. Then, having learned Gurney's system of shorthand in his spare time, he left to become a freelance reporter. A distant relative, Thomas Charlton, was a freelance reporter at Doctors' Commons and Dickens was able to share his box there to report the legal proceedings for nearly four years. This education was to inform works such as Nicholas Nickleby, Dombey and Son and especially Bleak House, whose vivid portrayal of the machinations and bureaucracy of the legal system did much to enlighten the general public and served as a vehicle for dissemination of Dickens's own views regarding, particularly, the heavy burden on the poor who were forced by circumstances to "go to law". + +In 1830, Dickens met his first love, Maria Beadnell, thought to have been the model for the character Dora in David Copperfield. Maria's parents disapproved of the courtship and ended the relationship by sending her to school in Paris. + +Career + +Journalism and writing + +In 1832, at the age of 20, Dickens was energetic and increasingly self-confident. He enjoyed mimicry and popular entertainment, lacked a clear, specific sense of what he wanted to become, and yet knew he wanted fame. Drawn to the theatre – he became an early member of the Garrick Club – he landed an acting audition at Covent Garden, where the manager George Bartley and the actor Charles Kemble were to see him. Dickens prepared meticulously and decided to imitate the comedian Charles Mathews, but ultimately he missed the audition because of a cold. Before another opportunity arose, he had set out on his career as a writer. + +In 1833, Dickens submitted his first story, "A Dinner at Poplar Walk", to the London periodical Monthly Magazine. William Barrow, Dickens's uncle on his mother's side, offered him a job on The Mirror of Parliament and he worked in the House of Commons for the first time early in 1832. He rented rooms at Furnival's Inn and worked as a political journalist, reporting on Parliamentary debates, and he travelled across Britain to cover election campaigns for the Morning Chronicle. His journalism, in the form of sketches in periodicals, formed his first collection of pieces, published in 1836: Sketches by Boz – Boz being a family nickname he employed as a pseudonym for some years. Dickens apparently adopted it from the nickname 'Moses', which he had given to his youngest brother Augustus Dickens, after a character in Oliver Goldsmith's The Vicar of Wakefield. When pronounced by anyone with a head cold, "Moses" became "Boses" – later shortened to Boz. Dickens's own name was considered "queer" by a contemporary critic, who wrote in 1849: "Mr Dickens, as if in revenge for his own queer name, does bestow still queerer ones upon his fictitious creations." Dickens contributed to and edited journals throughout his literary career. In January 1835, the Morning Chronicle launched an evening edition, under the editorship of the Chronicles music critic, George Hogarth. Hogarth invited him to contribute Street Sketches and Dickens became a regular visitor to his Fulham house – excited by Hogarth's friendship with Walter Scott (whom Dickens greatly admired) and enjoying the company of Hogarth's three daughters: Georgina, Mary and 19-year-old Catherine. + +Dickens made rapid progress both professionally and socially. He began a friendship with William Harrison Ainsworth, the author of the highwayman novel Rookwood (1834), whose bachelor salon in Harrow Road had become the meeting place for a set that included Daniel Maclise, Benjamin Disraeli, Edward Bulwer-Lytton and George Cruikshank. All these became his friends and collaborators, with the exception of Disraeli, and he met his first publisher, John Macrone, at the house. The success of Sketches by Boz led to a proposal from publishers Chapman and Hall for Dickens to supply text to match Robert Seymour's engraved illustrations in a monthly letterpress. Seymour committed suicide after the second instalment and Dickens, who wanted to write a connected series of sketches, hired "Phiz" to provide the engravings (which were reduced from four to two per instalment) for the story. The resulting story became The Pickwick Papers and, although the first few episodes were not successful, the introduction of the Cockney character Sam Weller in the fourth episode (the first to be illustrated by Phiz) marked a sharp climb in its popularity. The final instalment sold 40,000 copies. On the impact of the character, The Paris Review stated, "arguably the most historic bump in English publishing is the Sam Weller Bump." A publishing phenomenon, John Sutherland called The Pickwick Papers "[t]he most important single novel of the Victorian era". The unprecedented success led to numerous spin-offs and merchandise including Pickwick cigars, playing cards, china figurines, Sam Weller puzzles, Weller boot polish and joke books. + +On the creation of modern mass culture, Nicholas Dames in The Atlantic writes, "'Literature' is not a big enough category for Pickwick. It defined its own, a new one that we have learned to call 'entertainment'." In November 1836, Dickens accepted the position of editor of Bentley's Miscellany, a position he held for three years, until he fell out with the owner. In 1836, as he finished the last instalments of The Pickwick Papers, he began writing the beginning instalments of Oliver Twist – writing as many as 90 pages a month – while continuing work on Bentley's and also writing four plays, the production of which he oversaw. Oliver Twist, published in 1838, became one of Dickens's better known stories and was the first Victorian novel with a child protagonist. + +On 2 April 1836, after a one-year engagement, and between episodes two and three of The Pickwick Papers, Dickens married Catherine Thomson Hogarth (1815–1879), the daughter of George Hogarth, editor of the Evening Chronicle. They were married in St Luke's Church, Chelsea, London. After a brief honeymoon in Chalk in Kent, the couple returned to lodgings at Furnival's Inn. The first of their ten children, Charles, was born in January 1837 and a few months later the family set up home in Bloomsbury at 48 Doughty Street, London (on which Charles had a three-year lease at £80 a year) from 25 March 1837 until December 1839. Dickens's younger brother Frederick and Catherine's 17-year-old sister Mary Hogarth moved in with them. Dickens became very attached to Mary, and she died in his arms after a brief illness in 1837. Unusually for Dickens, as a consequence of his shock, he stopped working, and he and Catherine stayed at a little farm on Hampstead Heath for a fortnight. Dickens idealised Mary; the character he fashioned after her, Rose Maylie, he found he could not now kill, as he had planned, in his fiction, and, according to Ackroyd, he drew on memories of her for his later descriptions of Little Nell and Florence Dombey. His grief was so great that he was unable to meet the deadline for the June instalment of The Pickwick Papers and had to cancel the Oliver Twist instalment that month as well. The time in Hampstead was the occasion for a growing bond between Dickens and John Forster to develop; Forster soon became his unofficial business manager and the first to read his work. + +His success as a novelist continued. The young Queen Victoria read both Oliver Twist and The Pickwick Papers, staying up until midnight to discuss them. Nicholas Nickleby (1838–39), The Old Curiosity Shop (1840–41) and, finally, his first historical novel, Barnaby Rudge: A Tale of the Riots of 'Eighty, as part of the Master Humphrey's Clock series (1840–41), were all published in monthly instalments before being made into books. + +In the midst of all his activity during this period, there was discontent with his publishers and John Macrone was bought off, while Richard Bentley signed over all his rights in Oliver Twist. Other signs of a certain restlessness and discontent emerged; in Broadstairs he flirted with Eleanor Picken, the young fiancée of his solicitor's best friend and one night grabbed her and ran with her down to the sea. He declared they were both to drown there in the "sad sea waves". She finally got free, and afterwards kept her distance. In June 1841, he precipitously set out on a two-month tour of Scotland and then, in September 1841, telegraphed Forster that he had decided to go to America. Master Humphrey's Clock was shut down, though Dickens was still keen on the idea of the weekly magazine, a form he liked, an appreciation that had begun with his childhood reading of the 18th-century magazines Tatler and The Spectator. + +Dickens was perturbed by the return to power of the Tories, whom he described as "people whom, politically, I despise and abhor." He had been tempted to stand for the Liberals in Reading, but decided against it due to financial straits. He wrote three anti-Tory verse satires ("The Fine Old English Gentleman", "The Quack Doctor's Proclamation", and "Subjects for Painters") which were published in The Examiner. + +First visit to the United States +On 22 January 1842, Dickens and his wife arrived in Boston, Massachusetts, aboard the RMS Britannia during their first trip to the United States and Canada. At this time Georgina Hogarth, another sister of Catherine, joined the Dickens household, now living at Devonshire Terrace, Marylebone to care for the young family they had left behind. She remained with them as housekeeper, organiser, adviser and friend until Dickens's death in 1870. Dickens modelled the character of Agnes Wickfield after Georgina and Mary. + +He described his impressions in a travelogue, American Notes for General Circulation. In Notes, Dickens includes a powerful condemnation of slavery which he had attacked as early as The Pickwick Papers, correlating the emancipation of the poor in England with the abolition of slavery abroad citing newspaper accounts of runaway slaves disfigured by their masters. In spite of the abolitionist sentiments gleaned from his trip to America, some modern commentators have pointed out inconsistencies in Dickens's views on racial inequality. For instance, he has been criticised for his subsequent acquiescence in Governor Eyre's harsh crackdown during the 1860s Morant Bay rebellion in Jamaica and his failure to join other British progressives in condemning it. From Richmond, Virginia, Dickens returned to Washington, D.C., and started a trek westward, with brief pauses in Cincinnati and Louisville, to St. Louis, Missouri. While there, he expressed a desire to see an American prairie before returning east. A group of 13 men then set out with Dickens to visit Looking Glass Prairie, a trip 30 miles into Illinois. + +During his American visit, Dickens spent a month in New York City, giving lectures, raising the question of international copyright laws and the pirating of his work in America. He persuaded a group of 25 writers, headed by Washington Irving, to sign a petition for him to take to Congress, but the press were generally hostile to this, saying that he should be grateful for his popularity and that it was mercenary to complain about his work being pirated. + +The popularity he gained caused a shift in his self-perception according to critic Kate Flint, who writes that he "found himself a cultural commodity, and its circulation had passed out his control", causing him to become interested in and delve into themes of public and personal personas in the next novels. She writes that he assumed a role of "influential commentator", publicly and in his fiction, evident in his next few books. His trip to the U.S. ended with a trip to Canada – Niagara Falls, Toronto, Kingston and Montreal – where he appeared on stage in light comedies. + +Return to England +Soon after his return to England, Dickens began work on the first of his Christmas stories, A Christmas Carol, written in 1843, which was followed by The Chimes in 1844 and The Cricket on the Hearth in 1845. Of these, A Christmas Carol was most popular and, tapping into an old tradition, did much to promote a renewed enthusiasm for the joys of Christmas in Britain and America. The seeds for the story became planted in Dickens's mind during a trip to Manchester to witness the conditions of the manufacturing workers there. This, along with scenes he had recently witnessed at the Field Lane Ragged School, caused Dickens to resolve to "strike a sledge hammer blow" for the poor. As the idea for the story took shape and the writing began in earnest, Dickens became engrossed in the book. He later wrote that as the tale unfolded he "wept and laughed, and wept again" as he "walked about the black streets of London fifteen or twenty miles many a night when all sober folks had gone to bed". + +After living briefly in Italy (1844), Dickens travelled to Switzerland (1846), where he began work on Dombey and Son (1846–48). This and David Copperfield (1849–50) mark a significant artistic break in Dickens's career as his novels became more serious in theme and more carefully planned than his early works. + +At about this time, he was made aware of a large embezzlement at the firm where his brother, Augustus, worked (John Chapman & Co). It had been carried out by Thomas Powell, a clerk, who was on friendly terms with Dickens and who had acted as mentor to Augustus when he started work. Powell was also an author and poet and knew many of the famous writers of the day. After further fraudulent activities, Powell fled to New York and published a book called The Living Authors of England with a chapter on Charles Dickens, who was not amused by what Powell had written. One item that seemed to have annoyed him was the assertion that he had based the character of Paul Dombey (Dombey and Son) on Thomas Chapman, one of the principal partners at John Chapman & Co. Dickens immediately sent a letter to Lewis Gaylord Clark, editor of the New York literary magazine The Knickerbocker, saying that Powell was a forger and thief. Clark published the letter in the New-York Tribune and several other papers picked up on the story. Powell began proceedings to sue these publications and Clark was arrested. Dickens, realising that he had acted in haste, contacted John Chapman & Co to seek written confirmation of Powell's guilt. Dickens did receive a reply confirming Powell's embezzlement, but once the directors realised this information might have to be produced in court, they refused to make further disclosures. Owing to the difficulties of providing evidence in America to support his accusations, Dickens eventually made a private settlement with Powell out of court. + +Philanthropy + +Angela Burdett Coutts, heir to the Coutts banking fortune, approached Dickens in May 1846 about setting up a home for the redemption of fallen women of the working class. Coutts envisioned a home that would replace the punitive regimes of existing institutions with a reformative environment conducive to education and proficiency in domestic household chores. After initially resisting, Dickens eventually founded the home, named Urania Cottage, in the Lime Grove area of Shepherd's Bush, which he managed for ten years, setting the house rules, reviewing the accounts and interviewing prospective residents. Emigration and marriage were central to Dickens's agenda for the women on leaving Urania Cottage, from which it is estimated that about 100 women graduated between 1847 and 1859. + +Religious views + +As a young man, Dickens expressed a distaste for certain aspects of organised religion. In 1836, in a pamphlet titled Sunday Under Three Heads, he defended the people's right to pleasure, opposing a plan to prohibit games on Sundays. "Look into your churches – diminished congregations and scanty attendance. People have grown sullen and obstinate, and are becoming disgusted with the faith which condemns them to such a day as this, once in every seven. They display their feeling by staying away [from church]. Turn into the streets [on a Sunday] and mark the rigid gloom that reigns over everything around." + +Dickens honoured the figure of Jesus Christ. He is regarded as a professing Christian. His son, Henry Fielding Dickens, described him as someone who "possessed deep religious convictions". In the early 1840s, he had shown an interest in Unitarian Christianity and Robert Browning remarked that "Mr Dickens is an enlightened Unitarian." Professor Gary Colledge has written that he "never strayed from his attachment to popular lay Anglicanism". Dickens authored a work called The Life of Our Lord (1846), a book about the life of Christ, written with the purpose of sharing his faith with his children and family. In a scene from David Copperfield, Dickens echoed Geoffrey Chaucer's use of Luke 23:34 from Troilus and Criseyde (Dickens held a copy in his library), with G. K. Chesterton writing, "among the great canonical English authors, Chaucer and Dickens have the most in common." + +Dickens disapproved of Roman Catholicism and 19th-century evangelicalism, seeing both as extremes of Christianity and likely to limit personal expression, and was critical of what he saw as the hypocrisy of religious institutions and philosophies like spiritualism, all of which he considered deviations from the true spirit of Christianity, as shown in the book he wrote for his family in 1846. While Dickens advocated equal rights for Catholics in England, he strongly disliked how individual civil liberties were often threatened in countries where Catholicism predominated and referred to the Catholic Church as "that curse upon the world." Dickens also rejected the Evangelical conviction that the Bible was the infallible word of God. His ideas on Biblical interpretation were similar to the Liberal Anglican Arthur Penrhyn Stanley's doctrine of "progressive revelation". Leo Tolstoy and Fyodor Dostoyevsky referred to Dickens as "that great Christian writer". + +Middle years +In December 1845, Dickens took up the editorship of the London-based Daily News, a liberal paper through which Dickens hoped to advocate, in his own words, "the Principles of Progress and Improvement, of Education and Civil and Religious Liberty and Equal Legislation." Among the other contributors Dickens chose to write for the paper were the radical economist Thomas Hodgskin and the social reformer Douglas William Jerrold, who frequently attacked the Corn Laws. Dickens lasted only ten weeks on the job before resigning due to a combination of exhaustion and frustration with one of the paper's co-owners. + +A Francophile, Dickens often holidayed in France and, in a speech delivered in Paris in 1846 in French, called the French "the first people in the universe". During his visit to Paris, Dickens met the French literati Alexandre Dumas, Victor Hugo, Eugène Scribe, Théophile Gautier, François-René de Chateaubriand and Eugène Sue. In early 1849, Dickens started to write David Copperfield. It was published between 1849 and 1850. In Dickens's biography, Life of Charles Dickens (1872), John Forster wrote of David Copperfield, "underneath the fiction lay something of the author's life". It was Dickens's personal favourite among his own novels, as he wrote in the author's preface to the 1867 edition of the novel. + +In late November 1851, Dickens moved into Tavistock House where he wrote Bleak House (1852–53), Hard Times (1854) and Little Dorrit (1856). It was here that he indulged in the amateur theatricals described in Forster's Life of Charles Dickens. During this period, he worked closely with the novelist and playwright Wilkie Collins. In 1856, his income from writing allowed him to buy Gads Hill Place in Higham, Kent. As a child, Dickens had walked past the house and dreamed of living in it. The area was also the scene of some of the events of Shakespeare's Henry IV, Part 1 and this literary connection pleased him. + +During this time Dickens was also the publisher, editor and a major contributor to the journals Household Words (1850–1859) and All the Year Round (1858–1870). In 1854, at the behest of Sir John Franklin's widow Lady Jane, Dickens viciously attacked Arctic explorer John Rae in Household Words for his report to the Admiralty, based on interviews with local Inuit, that the members of Franklin's lost expedition had resorted to cannibalism. These attacks would later be expanded on his 1856 play The Frozen Deep, which satirizes Rae and the Inuit. 20th century archaeology work in King William Island later confirmed that the members of the Franklin expedition resorted to cannibalism. + +In 1855, when Dickens's good friend and Liberal MP Austen Henry Layard formed an Administrative Reform Association to demand significant reforms of Parliament, Dickens joined and volunteered his resources in support of Layard's cause. With the exception of Lord John Russell, who was the only leading politician in whom Dickens had any faith and to whom he later dedicated A Tale of Two Cities, Dickens believed that the political aristocracy and their incompetence were the death of England. When he and Layard were accused of fomenting class conflict, Dickens replied that the classes were already in opposition and the fault was with the aristocratic class. Dickens used his pulpit in Household Words to champion the Reform Association. He also commented on foreign affairs, declaring his support for Giuseppe Garibaldi and Giuseppe Mazzini, helping raise funds for their campaigns and stating that "a united Italy would be of vast importance to the peace of the world, and would be a rock in Louis Napoleon's way," and that "I feel for Italy almost as if I were an Italian born." Dickens also published dozens of writings in Household Words supporting vaccination, including multiple laudations for vaccine pioneer Edward Jenner. + +Following the Indian Mutiny of 1857, Dickens joined in the widespread criticism of the East India Company for its role in the event, but reserved his fury for Indians, wishing that he was the commander-in-chief in India so that he would be able to, "do my utmost to exterminate the Race upon whom the stain of the late cruelties rested." + +In 1857, Dickens hired professional actresses for The Frozen Deep, written by him and his protégé, Wilkie Collins. Dickens fell in love with one of the actresses, Ellen Ternan, and this passion was to last the rest of his life. In 1858, when Dickens was 45 and Ternan 18, divorce was nearly unthinkable for someone as famous as he was. After publicly accusing Catherine of not loving their children and suffering from "a mental disorder" – statements that disgusted his contemporaries, including Elizabeth Barrett Browning – Dickens attempted to have Catherine institutionalized. When this scheme failed, they separated. When Catherine left, never to see her husband again, she took with her one child, leaving the other children to be raised by her sister Georgina, who chose to stay at Gads Hill. + +During this period, whilst pondering a project to give public readings for his own profit, Dickens was approached through a charitable appeal by Great Ormond Street Hospital to help it survive its first major financial crisis. His "Drooping Buds" essay in Household Words earlier on 3 April 1852 was considered by the hospital's founders to have been the catalyst for the hospital's success. Dickens, whose philanthropy was well-known, was asked by his friend, the hospital's founder Charles West, to preside over the appeal, and he threw himself into the task, heart and soul. Dickens's public readings secured sufficient funds for an endowment to put the hospital on a sound financial footing; one reading on 9 February 1858 alone raised £3,000. + +After separating from Catherine, Dickens undertook a series of hugely popular and remunerative reading tours which, together with his journalism, were to absorb most of his creative energies for the next decade, in which he was to write only two more novels. His first reading tour, lasting from April 1858 to February 1859, consisted of 129 appearances in 49 towns throughout England, Scotland and Ireland. Dickens's continued fascination with the theatrical world was written into the theatre scenes in Nicholas Nickleby, but more importantly he found an outlet in public readings. In 1866, he undertook a series of public readings in England and Scotland, with more the following year in England and Ireland. + +Other works soon followed, including A Tale of Two Cities (1859) and Great Expectations (1861), which were resounding successes. Set in London and Paris, A Tale of Two Cities is his best-known work of historical fiction and includes the famous opening sentence which begins with "It was the best of times, it was the worst of times." It is regularly cited as one of the best-selling novels of all time. Themes in Great Expectations include wealth and poverty, love and rejection, and the eventual triumph of good over evil. + +In early September 1860, in a field behind Gads Hill, Dickens made a bonfire of most of his correspondence; only those letters on business matters were spared. Since Ellen Ternan also destroyed all of his letters to her, the extent of the affair between the two remains speculative. In the 1930s, Thomas Wright recounted that Ternan had unburdened herself to a Canon Benham and gave currency to rumours they had been lovers. That the two had a son who died in infancy was alleged by Dickens's daughter, Kate Perugini, whom Gladys Storey had interviewed before her death in 1929. Storey published her account in Dickens and Daughter, but no contemporary evidence exists. On his death, Dickens settled an annuity on Ternan which made her financially independent. Claire Tomalin's book The Invisible Woman argues that Ternan lived with Dickens secretly for the last 13 years of his life. The book was subsequently turned into a play, Little Nell, by Simon Gray, and a 2013 film. During the same period Dickens furthered his interest in the paranormal becoming one of the early members of The Ghost Club. + +In June 1862, he was offered £10,000 for a reading tour of Australia. He was enthusiastic, and even planned a travel book, The Uncommercial Traveller Upside Down, but ultimately decided against the tour. Two of his sons, Alfred D'Orsay Tennyson Dickens and Edward Bulwer Lytton Dickens, migrated to Australia, Edward becoming a member of the Parliament of New South Wales as Member for Wilcannia between 1889 and 1894. + +Later life + +On 9 June 1865, while returning from Paris with Ellen Ternan, Dickens was involved in the Staplehurst rail crash in Kent. The train's first seven carriages plunged off a cast iron bridge that was under repair. The only first-class carriage to remain on the track was the one in which Dickens was travelling. Before rescuers arrived, Dickens tended and comforted the wounded and the dying with a flask of brandy and a hat refreshed with water, and saved some lives. Before leaving, he remembered the unfinished manuscript for Our Mutual Friend, and he returned to his carriage to retrieve it. + +Dickens later used the experience of the crash as material for his short ghost story, "The Signal-Man", in which the central character has a premonition of his own death in a rail crash. He also based the story on several previous rail accidents, such as the Clayton Tunnel rail crash in Sussex of 1861. Dickens managed to avoid an appearance at the inquest to avoid disclosing that he had been travelling with Ternan and her mother, which would have caused a scandal. After the crash, Dickens was nervous when travelling by train and would use alternative means when available. In 1868 he wrote, "I have sudden vague rushes of terror, even when riding in a hansom cab, which are perfectly unreasonable but quite insurmountable." Dickens's son, Henry, recalled, "I have seen him sometimes in a railway carriage when there was a slight jolt. When this happened he was almost in a state of panic and gripped the seat with both hands." + +Second visit to the United States + +While he contemplated a second visit to the United States, the outbreak of the Civil War in America in 1861 delayed his plans. On 9 November 1867, over two years after the war, Dickens set sail from Liverpool for his second American reading tour. Landing in Boston, he devoted the rest of the month to a round of dinners with such notables as Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow and his American publisher, James T. Fields. In early December, the readings began. He performed 76 readings, netting £19,000, from December 1867 to April 1868. Dickens shuttled between Boston and New York, where he gave 22 readings at Steinway Hall. Although he had started to suffer from what he called the "true American catarrh", he kept to a schedule that would have challenged a much younger man, even managing to squeeze in some sleighing in Central Park. + +During his travels, he saw a change in the people and the circumstances of America. His final appearance was at a banquet the American Press held in his honour at Delmonico's on 18 April, when he promised never to denounce America again. By the end of the tour Dickens could hardly manage solid food, subsisting on champagne and eggs beaten in sherry. On 23 April he boarded the Cunard liner to return to Britain, barely escaping a federal tax lien against the proceeds of his lecture tour. + +Farewell readings + +In 1868–69, Dickens gave a series of "farewell readings" in England, Scotland and Ireland, beginning on 6 October. He managed, of a contracted 100 readings, to give 75 in the provinces, with a further 12 in London. As he pressed on he was affected by giddiness and fits of paralysis. He had a stroke on 18 April 1869 in Chester. He collapsed on 22 April 1869, at Preston, Lancashire; on doctor's advice, the tour was cancelled. After further provincial readings were cancelled, he began work on his final novel, The Mystery of Edwin Drood. It was fashionable in the 1860s to 'do the slums' and, in company, Dickens visited opium dens in Shadwell, where he witnessed an elderly addict called "Laskar Sal", who formed the model for "Opium Sal" in Edwin Drood. + +After Dickens regained enough strength, he arranged, with medical approval, for a final series of readings to partly make up to his sponsors what they had lost due to his illness. There were 12 performances, on 11 January to 15 March 1870; the last at 8:00pm at St. James's Hall, London. Though in grave health by then, he read A Christmas Carol and The Trial from Pickwick. On 2 May, he made his last public appearance at a Royal Academy banquet in the presence of the Prince and Princess of Wales, paying a special tribute on the death of his friend, illustrator Daniel Maclise. + +Death + +On 8 June 1870, Dickens had another stroke at his home after a full day's work on Edwin Drood. He never regained consciousness and, the next day, he died at Gads Hill Place. Biographer Claire Tomalin has suggested Dickens was actually in Peckham when he had had the stroke and his mistress Ellen Ternan and her maids had him taken back to Gads Hill so that the public would not know the truth about their relationship. Contrary to his wish to be buried at Rochester Cathedral "in an inexpensive, unostentatious, and strictly private manner", he was laid to rest in the Poets' Corner of Westminster Abbey. A printed epitaph circulated at the time of the funeral reads: + +A letter from Dickens to the Clerk of the Privy Council in March indicates he'd been offered and had accepted a baronetcy, which was not gazetted before his death. His last words were "On the ground", in response to his sister-in-law Georgina's request that he lie down. On Sunday, 19 June 1870, five days after Dickens was buried in the Abbey, Dean Arthur Penrhyn Stanley delivered a memorial elegy, lauding "the genial and loving humorist whom we now mourn", for showing by his own example "that even in dealing with the darkest scenes and the most degraded characters, genius could still be clean, and mirth could be innocent". Pointing to the fresh flowers that adorned the novelist's grave, Stanley assured those present that "the spot would thenceforth be a sacred one with both the New World and the Old, as that of the representative of literature, not of this island only, but of all who speak our English tongue." + +In his will, drafted more than a year before his death, Dickens left the care of his £80,000 estate (£ in ) to his long-time colleague John Forster and his "best and truest friend" Georgina Hogarth who, along with Dickens's two sons, also received a tax-free sum of £8,000 (equivalent to £ in ). Although Dickens and his wife had been separated for several years at the time of his death, he provided her with an annual income of £600 (£ in ) and made her similar allowances in his will. He also bequeathed £19 19s (£ in ) to each servant in his employment at the time of his death. + +Literary style + +Dickens's approach to the novel is influenced by various things, including the picaresque novel tradition, melodrama and the novel of sensibility. According to Ackroyd, other than these, perhaps the most important literary influence on him was derived from the fables of The Arabian Nights. Satire and irony are central to the picaresque novel. Comedy is also an aspect of the British picaresque novel tradition of Laurence Sterne, Henry Fielding and Tobias Smollett. Fielding's Tom Jones was a major influence on the 19th-century novelist including Dickens, who read it in his youth and named a son Henry Fielding Dickens after him. Influenced by Gothic fiction—a literary genre that began with The Castle of Otranto (1764) by Horace Walpole—Dickens incorporated Gothic imagery, settings and plot devices in his works. Victorian gothic moved from castles and abbeys into contemporary urban environments: in particular London, such as Dickens's Oliver Twist and Bleak House. The jilted bride Miss Havisham from Great Expectations is one of Dickens's best-known gothic creations; living in a ruined mansion, her bridal gown effectively doubles as her funeral shroud. + +No other writer had such a profound influence on Dickens as William Shakespeare. On Dickens's veneration of Shakespeare, Alfred Harbage wrote in A Kind of Power: The Shakespeare-Dickens Analogy (1975) that "No one is better qualified to recognise literary genius than a literary genius". Regarding Shakespeare as "the great master" whose plays "were an unspeakable source of delight", Dickens's lifelong affinity with the playwright included seeing theatrical productions of his plays in London and putting on amateur dramatics with friends in his early years. In 1838, Dickens travelled to Stratford-upon-Avon and visited the house in which Shakespeare was born, leaving his autograph in the visitors' book. Dickens would draw on this experience in his next work, Nicholas Nickleby (1838–39), expressing the strength of feeling experienced by visitors to Shakespeare's birthplace: the character Mrs Wititterly states, "I don't know how it is, but after you've seen the place and written your name in the little book, somehow or other you seem to be inspired; it kindles up quite a fire within one." + +Dickens's writing style is marked by a profuse linguistic creativity. Satire, flourishing in his gift for caricature, is his forte. An early reviewer compared him to Hogarth for his keen practical sense of the ludicrous side of life, though his acclaimed mastery of varieties of class idiom may in fact mirror the conventions of contemporary popular theatre. Dickens worked intensively on developing arresting names for his characters that would reverberate with associations for his readers and assist the development of motifs in the storyline, giving what one critic calls an "allegorical impetus" to the novels' meanings. To cite one of numerous examples, the name Mr Murdstone in David Copperfield conjures up twin allusions to murder and stony coldness. His literary style is also a mixture of fantasy and realism. His satires of British aristocratic snobbery – he calls one character the "Noble Refrigerator" – are often popular. Comparing orphans to stocks and shares, people to tug boats or dinner-party guests to furniture are just some of Dickens's acclaimed flights of fancy. + +The author worked closely with his illustrators, supplying them with a summary of the work at the outset and thus ensuring that his characters and settings were exactly how he envisioned them. He briefed the illustrator on plans for each month's instalment so that work could begin before he wrote them. Marcus Stone, illustrator of Our Mutual Friend, recalled that the author was always "ready to describe down to the minutest details the personal characteristics, and ... life-history of the creations of his fancy". Dickens employs Cockney English in many of his works, denoting working-class Londoners. Cockney grammar appears in terms such as ain't, and consonants in words are frequently omitted, as in 'ere (here) and wot (what). An example of this usage is in Oliver Twist. The Artful Dodger uses cockney slang which is juxtaposed with Oliver's 'proper' English, when the Dodger repeats Oliver saying "seven" with "sivin". + +Characters + +Dickens's biographer Claire Tomalin regards him as the greatest creator of character in English fiction after Shakespeare. +Dickensian characters are amongst the most memorable in English literature, especially so because of their typically whimsical names. The likes of Ebenezer Scrooge, Tiny Tim, Jacob Marley and Bob Cratchit (A Christmas Carol); Oliver Twist, The Artful Dodger, Fagin and Bill Sikes (Oliver Twist); Pip, Miss Havisham and Abel Magwitch (Great Expectations); Sydney Carton, Charles Darnay and Madame Defarge (A Tale of Two Cities); David Copperfield, Uriah Heep and Mr Micawber (David Copperfield); Daniel Quilp and Nell Trent (The Old Curiosity Shop), Samuel Pickwick and Sam Weller (The Pickwick Papers); and Wackford Squeers (Nicholas Nickleby) are so well known as to be part and parcel of popular culture, and in some cases have passed into ordinary language: a scrooge, for example, is a miser or someone who dislikes Christmas festivity. + +His characters were often so memorable that they took on a life of their own outside his books. "Gamp" became a slang expression for an umbrella from the character Mrs Gamp, and "Pickwickian", "Pecksniffian" and "Gradgrind" all entered dictionaries due to Dickens's original portraits of such characters who were, respectively, quixotic, hypocritical and vapidly factual. The character that made Dickens famous, Sam Weller became known for his Wellerisms—one-liners that turned proverbs on their heads. Many were drawn from real life: Mrs Nickleby is based on his mother, although she did not recognise herself in the portrait, just as Mr Micawber is constructed from aspects of his father's 'rhetorical exuberance'; Harold Skimpole in Bleak House is based on James Henry Leigh Hunt; his wife's dwarfish chiropodist recognised herself in Miss Mowcher in David Copperfield. Perhaps Dickens's impressions on his meeting with Hans Christian Andersen informed the delineation of Uriah Heep (a term synonymous with sycophant). + +Virginia Woolf maintained that "we remodel our psychological geography when we read Dickens" as he produces "characters who exist not in detail, not accurately or exactly, but abundantly in a cluster of wild yet extraordinarily revealing remarks". T. S. Eliot wrote that Dickens "excelled in character; in the creation of characters of greater intensity than human beings". One "character" vividly drawn throughout his novels is London itself. Dickens described London as a magic lantern, inspiring the places and people in many of his novels. From the coaching inns on the outskirts of the city to the lower reaches of the Thames, all aspects of the capital – Dickens's London – are described over the course of his body of work. Walking the streets (particularly around London) formed an integral part of his writing life, stoking his creativity. Dickens was known to regularly walk at least a dozen miles (19 km) per day, and once wrote, "If I couldn't walk fast and far, I should just explode and perish." + +Autobiographical elements + +Authors frequently draw their portraits of characters from people they have known in real life. David Copperfield is regarded by many as a veiled autobiography of Dickens. The scenes of interminable court cases and legal arguments in Bleak House reflect Dickens's experiences as a law clerk and court reporter, and in particular his direct experience of the law's procedural delay during 1844 when he sued publishers in Chancery for breach of copyright. Dickens's father was sent to prison for debt, and this became a common theme in many of his books, with the detailed depiction of life in the Marshalsea prison in Little Dorrit resulting from Dickens's own experiences of the institution. Lucy Stroughill, a childhood sweetheart, may have affected several of Dickens's portraits of girls such as Little Em'ly in David Copperfield and Lucie Manette in A Tale of Two Cities. + +Dickens may have drawn on his childhood experiences, but he was also ashamed of them and would not reveal that this was where he gathered his realistic accounts of squalor. Very few knew the details of his early life until six years after his death, when John Forster published a biography on which Dickens had collaborated. Though Skimpole brutally sends up Leigh Hunt, some critics have detected in his portrait features of Dickens's own character, which he sought to exorcise by self-parody. + +Episodic writing + +A pioneer of the serial publication of narrative fiction, Dickens wrote most of his major novels in monthly or weekly instalments in journals such as Master Humphrey's Clock and Household Words, later reprinted in book form. These instalments made the stories affordable and accessible, with the audience more evenly distributed across income levels than previous. His instalment format inspired a narrative that he would explore and develop throughout his career, and the regular cliffhangers made each new episode widely anticipated. When The Old Curiosity Shop was being serialised, American fans waited at the docks in New York harbour, shouting out to the crew of an incoming British ship, "Is little Nell dead?" Dickens was able to incorporate this episodic writing style but still end up with a coherent novel at the end. + +Another important impact of Dickens's episodic writing style resulted from his exposure to the opinions of his readers and friends. His friend Forster had a significant hand in reviewing his drafts, an influence that went beyond matters of punctuation; he toned down melodramatic and sensationalist exaggerations, cut long passages (such as the episode of Quilp's drowning in The Old Curiosity Shop), and made suggestions about plot and character. It was he who suggested that Charley Bates should be redeemed in Oliver Twist. Dickens had not thought of killing Little Nell and it was Forster who advised him to entertain this possibility as necessary to his conception of the heroine. + +At the helm in popularising cliffhangers and serial publications in Victorian literature, Dickens's influence can also be seen in television soap operas and film series, with The Guardian stating that "the DNA of Dickens's busy, episodic storytelling, delivered in instalments and rife with cliffhangers and diversions, is traceable in everything." His serialisation of his novels also drew comments from other writers. In Scottish author Robert Louis Stevenson's novel The Wrecker, Captain Nares, investigating an abandoned ship, remarked: "See! They were writing up the log," said Nares, pointing to the ink-bottle. "Caught napping, as usual. I wonder if there ever was a captain yet that lost a ship with his log-book up to date? He generally has about a month to fill up on a clean break, like Charles Dickens and his serial novels." + +Social commentary + +Dickens's novels were, among other things, works of social commentary. Simon Callow states, "From the moment he started to write, he spoke for the people, and the people loved him for it." He was a fierce critic of the poverty and social stratification of Victorian society. In a New York address, he expressed his belief that "Virtue shows quite as well in rags and patches as she does in purple and fine linen". Dickens's second novel, Oliver Twist (1839), shocked readers with its images of poverty and crime: it challenged middle class polemics about criminals, making impossible any pretence to ignorance about what poverty entailed. + +At a time when Britain was the major economic and political power of the world, Dickens highlighted the life of the forgotten poor and disadvantaged within society. Through his journalism he campaigned on specific issues – such as sanitation and the workhouse – but his fiction probably demonstrated its greatest prowess in changing public opinion in regard to class inequalities. He often depicted the exploitation and oppression of the poor and condemned the public officials and institutions that not only allowed such abuses to exist, but flourished as a result. His most strident indictment of this condition is in Hard Times (1854), Dickens's only novel-length treatment of the industrial working class. In this work, he uses vitriol and satire to illustrate how this marginalised social stratum was termed "Hands" by the factory owners; that is, not really "people" but rather only appendages of the machines they operated. His writings inspired others, in particular journalists and political figures, to address such problems of class oppression. For example, the prison scenes in The Pickwick Papers are claimed to have been influential in having the Fleet Prison shut down. Karl Marx asserted that Dickens "issued to the world more political and social truths than have been uttered by all the professional politicians, publicists and moralists put together". George Bernard Shaw even remarked that Great Expectations was more seditious than Marx's Das Kapital. The exceptional popularity of Dickens's novels, even those with socially oppositional themes (Bleak House, 1853; Little Dorrit, 1857; Our Mutual Friend, 1865), not only underscored his ability to create compelling storylines and unforgettable characters, but also ensured that the Victorian public confronted issues of social justice that had commonly been ignored. + +It has been argued that his technique of flooding his narratives with an 'unruly superfluity of material' that, in the gradual dénouement, yields up an unsuspected order, influenced the organisation of Charles Darwin's On the Origin of Species. + +Literary techniques + +Dickens is often described as using idealised characters and highly sentimental scenes to contrast with his caricatures and the ugly social truths he reveals. The story of Nell Trent in The Old Curiosity Shop (1841) was received as extraordinarily moving by contemporary readers but viewed as ludicrously sentimental by Oscar Wilde. "One must have a heart of stone to read the death of little Nell", he said in a famous remark, "without dissolving into tears ... of laughter." G. K. Chesterton stated, "It is not the death of little Nell, but the life of little Nell, that I object to", arguing that the maudlin effect of his description of her life owed much to the gregarious nature of Dickens's grief, his "despotic" use of people's feelings to move them to tears in works like this. + +The question as to whether Dickens belongs to the tradition of the sentimental novel is debatable. Valerie Purton, in her book Dickens and the Sentimental Tradition, sees him continuing aspects of this tradition, and argues that his "sentimental scenes and characters [are] as crucial to the overall power of the novels as his darker or comic figures and scenes", and that "Dombey and Son is [ ... ] Dickens's greatest triumph in the sentimentalist tradition". The Encyclopædia Britannica online comments that, despite "patches of emotional excess", such as the reported death of Tiny Tim in A Christmas Carol (1843), "Dickens cannot really be termed a sentimental novelist". + +In Oliver Twist Dickens provides readers with an idealised portrait of a boy so inherently and unrealistically good that his values are never subverted by either brutal orphanages or coerced involvement in a gang of young pickpockets. While later novels also centre on idealised characters (Esther Summerson in Bleak House and Amy Dorrit in Little Dorrit), this idealism serves only to highlight Dickens's goal of poignant social commentary. Dickens's fiction, reflecting what he believed to be true of his own life, makes frequent use of coincidence, either for comic effect or to emphasise the idea of providence. For example, Oliver Twist turns out to be the lost nephew of the upper-class family that rescues him from the dangers of the pickpocket group. Such coincidences are a staple of 18th-century picaresque novels, such as Henry Fielding's Tom Jones, which Dickens enjoyed reading as a youth. + +Reputation + +Dickens was the most popular novelist of his time, and remains one of the best-known and most-read of English authors. His works have never gone out of print, and have been adapted continually for the screen since the invention of cinema, with at least 200 motion pictures and TV adaptations based on Dickens's works documented. Many of his works were adapted for the stage during his own lifetime – early productions included The Haunted Man which was performed in the West End's Adelphi Theatre in 1848 – and, as early as 1901, the British silent film Scrooge, or, Marley's Ghost was made by Walter R. Booth. Contemporaries such as publisher Edward Lloyd cashed in on Dickens's popularity with cheap imitations of his novels, resulting in his own popular 'penny dreadfuls'. + +Dickens created some of the world's best-known fictional characters and is regarded by many as the greatest British novelist of the Victorian era. From the beginning of his career in the 1830s, his achievements in English literature were compared to those of Shakespeare. Dickens's literary reputation, however, began to decline with the publication of Bleak House in 1852–53. Philip Collins calls Bleak House "a crucial item in the history of Dickens's reputation. Reviewers and literary figures during the 1850s, 1860s and 1870s, saw a 'drear decline' in Dickens, from a writer of 'bright sunny comedy ... to dark and serious social' commentary". The Spectator called Bleak House "a heavy book to read through at once ... dull and wearisome as a serial"; Richard Simpson, in The Rambler, characterised Hard Times as "this dreary framework"; Fraser's Magazine thought Little Dorrit "decidedly the worst of his novels". All the same, despite these "increasing reservations amongst reviewers and the chattering classes, 'the public never deserted its favourite'". Dickens's popular reputation remained unchanged, sales continued to rise, and Household Words and later All the Year Round were highly successful. + +As his career progressed, Dickens's fame and the demand for his public readings were unparalleled. In 1868 The Times wrote, "Amid all the variety of 'readings', those of Mr Charles Dickens stand alone." A Dickens biographer, Edgar Johnson, wrote in the 1950s: "It was [always] more than a reading; it was an extraordinary exhibition of acting that seized upon its auditors with a mesmeric possession." Juliet John backed the claim for Dickens "to be called the first self-made global media star of the age of mass culture." Comparing his reception at public readings to those of a contemporary pop star, The Guardian states, "People sometimes fainted at his shows. His performances even saw the rise of that modern phenomenon, the 'speculator' or ticket tout (scalpers) – the ones in New York City escaped detection by borrowing respectable-looking hats from the waiters in nearby restaurants." + +Among fellow writers, there was a range of opinions on Dickens. Poet laureate, William Wordsworth (1770–1850), thought him a "very talkative, vulgar young person", adding he had not read a line of his work, while novelist George Meredith (1828–1909), found Dickens "intellectually lacking". In 1888, Leslie Stephen commented in the Dictionary of National Biography that "if literary fame could be safely measured by popularity with the half-educated, Dickens must claim the highest position among English novelists". Anthony Trollope's Autobiography famously declared Thackeray, not Dickens, to be the greatest novelist of the age. However, both Leo Tolstoy and Fyodor Dostoyevsky were admirers. Dostoyevsky commented: "We understand Dickens in Russia, I am convinced, almost as well as the English, perhaps even with all the nuances. It may well be that we love him no less than his compatriots do. And yet how original is Dickens, and how very English!" Tolstoy referred to David Copperfield as his favourite book, and he later adopted the novel as "a model for his own autobiographical reflections". French writer Jules Verne called Dickens his favourite writer, writing his novels "stand alone, dwarfing all others by their amazing power and felicity of expression". Dutch painter Vincent van Gogh was inspired by Dickens's novels in several of his paintings, such as Vincent's Chair, and in an 1889 letter to his sister stated that reading Dickens, especially A Christmas Carol, was one of the things that was keeping him from committing suicide. Oscar Wilde generally disparaged his depiction of character, while admiring his gift for caricature. Henry James denied him a premier position, calling him "the greatest of superficial novelists": Dickens failed to endow his characters with psychological depth, and the novels, "loose baggy monsters", betrayed a "cavalier organisation". Joseph Conrad described his own childhood in bleak Dickensian terms, noting he had "an intense and unreasoning affection" for Bleak House dating back to his boyhood. The novel influenced his own gloomy portrait of London in The Secret Agent (1907). Virginia Woolf had a love-hate relationship with Dickens, finding his novels "mesmerizing" while reproving him for his sentimentalism and a commonplace style. + +Around 1940–41, the attitude of the literary critics began to warm towards Dickens – led by George Orwell in Inside the Whale and Other Essays (March 1940), Edmund Wilson in The Wound and the Bow (1941) and Humphry House in Dickens and His World. However, even in 1948, F. R. Leavis, in The Great Tradition, asserted that "the adult mind doesn't as a rule find in Dickens a challenge to an unusual and sustained seriousness"; Dickens was indeed a great genius, "but the genius was that of a great entertainer", though he later changed his opinion with Dickens the Novelist (1970, with Q. D. (Queenie) Leavis): "Our purpose", they wrote, "is to enforce as unanswerably as possible the conviction that Dickens was one of the greatest of creative writers". In 1944, Soviet film director and film theorist Sergei Eisenstein wrote an essay on Dickens's influence on cinema, such as cross-cutting – where two stories run alongside each other, as seen in novels such as Oliver Twist. + +In the 1950s, "a substantial reassessment and re-editing of the works began, and critics found his finest artistry and greatest depth to be in the later novels: Bleak House, Little Dorrit, and Great Expectations – and (less unanimously) in Hard Times and Our Mutual Friend". Dickens was a favourite author of Roald Dahl; the best-selling children's author would include three of Dickens's novels among those read by the title character in his 1988 novel Matilda. An avid reader of Dickens, in 2005, Paul McCartney named Nicholas Nickleby his favourite novel. On Dickens he states, "I like the world that he takes me to. I like his words; I like the language", adding, "A lot of my stuff – it's kind of Dickensian." Screenwriter Jonathan Nolan's screenplay for The Dark Knight Rises (2012) was inspired by A Tale of Two Cities, with Nolan calling the depiction of Paris in the novel "one of the most harrowing portraits of a relatable, recognisable civilisation that completely folded to pieces". On 7 February 2012, the 200th anniversary of Dickens's birth, Philip Womack wrote in The Telegraph: "Today there is no escaping Charles Dickens. Not that there has ever been much chance of that before. He has a deep, peculiar hold upon us". + +Legacy + +Museums and festivals celebrating Dickens's life and works exist in many places with which Dickens was associated. These include the Charles Dickens Museum in London, the historic home where he wrote Oliver Twist, The Pickwick Papers and Nicholas Nickleby; and the Charles Dickens Birthplace Museum in Portsmouth, the house in which he was born. The original manuscripts of many of his novels, as well as printers' proofs, first editions, and illustrations from the collection of Dickens's friend John Forster are held at the Victoria and Albert Museum. Dickens's will stipulated that no memorial be erected in his honour; nonetheless, a life-size bronze statue of Dickens entitled Dickens and Little Nell, cast in 1890 by Francis Edwin Elwell, stands in Clark Park in the Spruce Hill neighbourhood of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Another life-size statue of Dickens is located at Centennial Park in Sydney, Australia. In 1960 a bas-relief sculpture of Dickens, notably featuring characters from his books, was commissioned from sculptor Estcourt J Clack to adorn the office building built on the site of his former home at 1 Devonshire Terrace, London. In 2014, a life-size statue was unveiled near his birthplace in Portsmouth on the 202nd anniversary of his birth; this was supported by his great-great-grandsons, Ian and Gerald Dickens. + +A Christmas Carol is most probably his best-known story, with frequent new adaptations. It is also the most-filmed of Dickens's stories, with many versions dating from the early years of cinema. According to the historian Ronald Hutton, the current state of the observance of Christmas is largely the result of a mid-Victorian revival of the holiday spearheaded by A Christmas Carol. Dickens catalysed the emerging Christmas as a family-centred festival of generosity, in contrast to the dwindling community-based and church-centred observations, as new middle-class expectations arose. Its archetypal figures (Scrooge, Tiny Tim, the Christmas ghosts) entered into Western cultural consciousness. "Merry Christmas", a prominent phrase from the tale, was popularised following the appearance of the story. The term Scrooge became a synonym for miser, and his exclamation "Bah! Humbug!'", a dismissal of the festive spirit, likewise gained currency as an idiom. The Victorian era novelist William Makepeace Thackeray called the book "a national benefit, and to every man and woman who reads it a personal kindness". + +Dickens was commemorated on the Series E £10 note issued by the Bank of England that circulated between 1992 and 2003. His portrait appeared on the reverse of the note accompanied by a scene from The Pickwick Papers. The Charles Dickens School is a high school in Broadstairs, Kent. A theme park, Dickens World, standing in part on the site of the former naval dockyard where Dickens's father once worked in the Navy Pay Office, opened in Chatham in 2007. To celebrate the 200th anniversary of the birth of Charles Dickens in 2012, the Museum of London held the UK's first major exhibition on the author in 40 years. In 2002, Dickens was number 41 in the BBC's poll of the 100 Greatest Britons. American literary critic Harold Bloom placed Dickens among the greatest Western writers of all time. In the 2003 UK survey The Big Read carried out by the BBC, five of Dickens's books were named in the Top 100. + +Actors who have portrayed Dickens on screen include Anthony Hopkins, Derek Jacobi, Simon Callow, Dan Stevens and Ralph Fiennes, the latter playing the author in The Invisible Woman (2013) which depicts Dickens's secret love affair with Ellen Ternan which lasted for thirteen years until his death in 1870. + +Dickens and his publications have appeared on a number of postage stamps in countries including: the United Kingdom (1970, 1993, 2011 and 2012 issued by the Royal Mail—their 2012 collection marked the bicentenary of Dickens's birth), the Soviet Union (1962), Antigua, Barbuda, Botswana, Cameroon, Dubai, Fujairah, St Lucia and Turks and Caicos Islands (1970), St Vincent (1987), Nevis (2007), Alderney, Gibraltar, Jersey and Pitcairn Islands (2012), Austria (2013), and Mozambique (2014). In 1976, a crater on the planet Mercury was named in his honour. + +In November 2018 it was reported that a previously lost portrait of a 31-year-old Dickens, by Margaret Gillies, had been found in Pietermaritzburg, South Africa. Gillies was an early supporter of women's suffrage and had painted the portrait in late 1843 when Dickens, aged 31, wrote A Christmas Carol. It was exhibited, to acclaim, at the Royal Academy of Arts in 1844. The Charles Dickens Museum is reported to have paid £180,000 for the portrait. + +Works + +Dickens published well over a dozen major novels and novellas, a large number of short stories, including a number of Christmas-themed stories, a handful of plays, and several non-fiction books. + +Novels and novellas +Dickens's novels and novellas were initially serialised in weekly and monthly magazines, then reprinted in standard book formats. + The Pickwick Papers (The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club; monthly serial, April 1836 to November 1837). Novel. + Oliver Twist (The Adventures of Oliver Twist; monthly serial in Bentley's Miscellany, February 1837 to April 1839). Novel. + Nicholas Nickleby (The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby; monthly serial, April 1838 to October 1839). Novel. + The Old Curiosity Shop (weekly serial in Master Humphrey's Clock, April 1840 to November 1841). Novel. + Barnaby Rudge (Barnaby Rudge: A Tale of the Riots of Eighty; weekly serial in Master Humphrey's Clock, February to November 1841). Novel. + A Christmas Carol (A Christmas Carol in Prose: Being a Ghost-story of Christmas; 1843). Novella. + Martin Chuzzlewit (The Life and Adventures of Martin Chuzzlewit; monthly serial, January 1843 to July 1844). Novel. + The Chimes (The Chimes: A Goblin Story of Some Bells That Rang an Old Year Out and a New Year In; 1844). Novella. + The Cricket on the Hearth (The Cricket on the Hearth: A Fairy Tale of Home; 1845). Novella. + The Battle of Life (The Battle of Life: A Love Story; 1846). Novella. + Dombey and Son (Dealings with the Firm of Dombey and Son: Wholesale, Retail and for Exportation; monthly serial, October 1846 to April 1848). Novel. + The Haunted Man (The Haunted Man and the Ghost's Bargain: A Fancy for Christmas-time; 1848). Novella. + David Copperfield (The Personal History, Adventures, Experience and Observation of David Copperfield the Younger of Blunderstone Rookery [Which He Never Meant to Publish on Any Account]; monthly serial, May 1849 to November 1850). Novel. + Bleak House (monthly serial, March 1852 to September 1853). Novel. + Hard Times (Hard Times: For These Times; weekly serial in Household Words, 1 April 1854, to 12 August 1854). Novel. + Little Dorrit (monthly serial, December 1855 to June 1857). Novel. + A Tale of Two Cities (weekly serial in All the Year Round, 30 April 1859, to 26 November 1859). Novel. + Great Expectations (weekly serial in All the Year Round, 1 December 1860 to 3 August 1861). Novel. + Our Mutual Friend (monthly serial, May 1864 to November 1865). Novel. + The Mystery of Edwin Drood (monthly serial, April 1870 to September 1870), novel left unfinished due to Dickens's death. + +See also + List of Dickensian characters + Racism in the work of Charles Dickens + Charles Dickens bibliography +The Fraud by Zadie Smith + +Notes + +References + +Sources + +Further reading + + + + Bradbury, Nicola, Charles Dickens' Great Expectations (St. Martin's Press, 1990) + Douglas-Fairhurst, Robert, "Becoming Dickens 'The Invention of a Novelist'", London: Harvard University Press, 2011 + + + + + Johnson, Edgar, Charles Dickens: his tragedy and triumph, New York: Simon and Schuster, 1952. In two volumes. + + + + + Manning, Mick & Granström, Brita, Charles Dickens: Scenes From An Extraordinary Life, Frances Lincoln Children's Books, 2011. + +External links + +Works + Charles Dickens's works on Bookwise + + + + + + + Charles Dickens at the British Library + +Organisations and portals + + + Charles Dickens on the Archives Hub + Archival material at Leeds University Library + The Dickens Fellowship, an international society dedicated to the study of Dickens and his Writings + Correspondence of Charles Dickens, with related papers, ca. 1834–1955 + Finding aid to Charles Dickens papers at Columbia University. Rare Book & Manuscript Library. + +Museums + Dickens Museum Situated in a former Dickens House, 48 Doughty Street, London, WC1 + Dickens Birthplace Museum Old Commercial Road, Portsmouth + Victoria and Albert Museum The V&A's collections relating to Dickens + +Other + + Charles Dickens's Traveling Kit From the John Davis Batchelder Collection at the Library of Congress + Charles Dickens's Walking Stick From the John Davis Batchelder Collection at the Library of Congress + Charles Dickens Collection: First editions of Charles Dickens's works included in the Leonard Kebler gift (dispersed in the Division's collection). From the Rare Book and Special Collections Division at the Library of Congress + + +1812 births +1870 deaths +19th-century English biographers +19th-century British newspaper founders +19th-century British short story writers +19th-century English dramatists and playwrights +19th-century English non-fiction writers +19th-century English novelists +19th-century English poets +19th-century English essayists +19th-century English historians +19th-century British journalists +19th-century letter writers +19th-century British philanthropists +19th-century pseudonymous writers +19th-century travel writers +Anglican writers +British male essayists +Burials at Westminster Abbey +Children's rights activists +Court reporters +Critics of religions +Critics of the Catholic Church +Educational reformers +English Anglicans +English historical novelists +English letter writers +English male dramatists and playwrights +English male journalists +English male non-fiction writers +English male novelists +English male poets +English male short story writers +English newspaper founders +English philanthropists +English prisoners and detainees +English reformers +English satirists +English travel writers +Ghost story writers +Lecturers +Literacy and society theorists +People from Camden Town +People from Chatham, Kent +People from Higham, Kent +People from Somers Town, London +British social reformers +Trope theorists +Victorian novelists +Writers about activism and social change +Writers from London +Writers from Portsmouth +Writers of Gothic fiction +Writers of historical fiction set in the early modern period +A carabiner or karabiner (), often shortened to biner or to crab, colloquially known as (climbing) clip, is a specialized type of shackle, a metal loop with a spring-loaded gate used to quickly and reversibly connect components, most notably in safety-critical systems. The word is a shortened form of Karabinerhaken (or also short Karabiner), a German phrase for a "carbine rifle hook" used by a carbine rifleman, or carabinier, to attach his carbine to a belt or bandolier. + +Use +Carabiners are widely used in rope-intensive activities such as climbing, fall arrest systems, arboriculture, caving, sailing, hot-air ballooning, rope rescue, construction, industrial rope work, window cleaning, whitewater rescue, and acrobatics. They are predominantly made from both steel and aluminium. Those used in sports tend to be of a lighter weight than those used in commercial applications and rope rescue. + +Often referred to as carabiner-style or as mini-carabiners, carabiner keyrings and other light-use clips of similar style and design have also become popular. Most are stamped with a "not for climbing" or similar warning due to a common lack of load-testing and safety standards in manufacturing. + +While any metal link with a spring-loaded gate is technically a carabiner, the strict usage among the climbing community specifically refers only to devices manufactured and tested for load-bearing in safety-critical systems like rock and mountain climbing, typically rated to 20 kN or more. + +Carabiners on hot-air balloons are used to connect the envelope to the basket and are rated at 2.5, 3, or 4 tonnes. + +Load-bearing screw-gate carabiners are used to connect the diver's umbilical to the surface supplied diver's harness. They are usually rated for a safe working load of 5 kN or more (equivalent to a weight in excess of approximately 500 kg). + +Types + +Shape +Carabiners come in four characteristic shapes: +Oval: Symmetric. Most basic and utilitarian. Smooth regular curves are gentle on equipment and allow easy repositioning of loads. Their greatest disadvantage is that a load is shared equally on both the strong solid spine and the weaker gated axis. +D: Asymmetric shape transfers the majority of the load on to the spine, the carabiner's strongest axis. +Offset-D: Variant of a D with a greater asymmetry, allowing for a wider gate opening. +Pear/HMS: Wider and rounder shape at the top than offset-D's, and typically larger. Used for belaying with a munter hitch, and with some types of belay device. The largest HMS carabiners can also be used for rappelling with a munter hitch (the size is needed to accommodate the hitch with two strands of rope). These are usually the heaviest carabiners. + +Locking mechanisms +Carabiners fall into three broad locking categories: non-locking, manual locking, and auto locking. + +Non-locking +Non-locking carabiners (or snap-links) have a sprung swinging gate that accepts a rope, webbing sling, or other hardware. Rock climbers frequently connect two non-locking carabiners with a short length of webbing to create a quickdraw (an extender). + +Two gate types are common: + + Solid gate: The more traditional carabiner design, incorporating a solid metal gate with separate pin and spring mechanisms. Most modern carabiners feature a 'key-lock nose shape and gate opening, which is less prone to snagging than traditional notch and pin design. Most locking carabiners are based on the solid gate design. + Wire gate: A single piece of bent spring-steel wire forms the gate. Wire gate carabiners are significantly lighter than solid gates, with roughly the same strength. Wire gates are less prone to icing up than solid gates, an advantage in Alpine mountaineering and ice climbing. The reduced gate mass makes their wire bales less prone to "gate flutter", a dangerous condition created when the carabiner suddenly impacts rock or other hard surfaces during a fall, and the gate opens momentarily due to momentum (and both lowers the breaking strength of the carabiner when open, and potentially allows the rope to escape). Simple wiregate designs feature a notch that can snag objects (similar to original solid gate designs), but newer designs feature a shroud or guide wires around the "hooked" part of the carabiner nose to prevent snagging. + +Both solid and wire gate carabiners can be either "straight gate" or "bent gate". Bent-gate carabiners are easier to clip a rope into using only one hand, and so are often used for the rope-end carabiner of quickdraws and alpine draws used for lead climbing. + +Locking + +Locking carabiners have the same general shape as non-locking carabiners, but have an additional mechanism securing the gate to prevent unintentional opening during use. These mechanisms may be either threaded sleeves ("screw-lock"), spring-loaded sleeves ("twist-lock"), magnetic levers ("Magnetron"), other spring loaded unlocking levers or opposing double spring loaded gates ("twin-gate"). + +Manual + Screw-lock (or screw gate): Have a threaded sleeve over the gate which must be engaged and disengaged manually. They have fewer moving parts than spring-loaded mechanisms, are less prone to malfunctioning due to contamination or component fatigue, and are easier to employ one-handed. They, however, require more total effort and are more time-consuming than pull-lock, twist-lock or lever-lock. + +Auto-locking + + Twist-lock, push-lock, twist-and-push-lock: Have a security sleeve over the gate which must be manually rotated and/or pulled to disengage, but which springs automatically to locked position upon release. They offer the advantage of re-engaging without additional user input, but being spring-loaded are prone to both spring fatigue and their more complex mechanisms becoming balky from dirt, ice, or other contamination. They are also difficult to open one-handed and with gloves on, and sometimes jam, getting stuck after being tightened under load, and being very hard to undo once the load is removed. + Multiple-levers: Having at least two spring loaded levers that are each operated with one hand. + Magnetic: Have two small levers with embedded magnets on either side of the locking gate which must be pushed towards each other or pinched simultaneously to unlock. Upon release the levers pull shut and into the locked position against a small steel insert in the carabiner nose. With the gate open the magnets in the two levers repel each other so they do not lock or stick together, which might prevent the gate from closing properly. Advantages are very easy one-handed operation, re-engaging without additional user input and few mechanical parts that can fail. +Double-Gate: Have two opposed overlapping gates at the opening which prevent a rope or anchor from inadvertently passing through the gate in either direction. Gates may only be opened by pushing outwards from in between towards either direction. The carabiner can therefore be opened by splitting the gates with a fingertip, allowing easy one hand operation. The likelihood of a rope under tension to split the gates is therefore practically none. The lack of a rotating lock prevents a rolling knot, such as the Munter hitch, from unlocking the gate and passing through, giving a measure of inherent safety in use and reducing mechanical complexity. + +Certification + +Europe +Recreation: Carabiners sold for use in climbing in Europe must conform to standard EN 12275:1998 "Mountaineering equipment – Connectors – Safety requirements and test methods", which governs testing protocols, rated strengths, and markings. A breaking strength of at least 20 kN (20,000 newtons = approximately 2040 kilograms of force which is significantly more than the weight of a small car) with the gate closed and 7 kN with the gate open is the standard for most climbing applications, although requirements vary depending on the activity. Carabiners are marked on the side with single letters showing their intended area of use, for example, K (via ferrata), B (base), and H (for belaying with an Italian or Munter hitch). +Industry: Carabiners used for access in commercial and industrial environments within Europe must comply with EN 362:2004 "Personal protective equipment against falls from a height. Connectors." The minimum gate closed breaking strength of a carabiner conforming with EN 362:2004 is nominally the same as that of EN 12275:1998 at around 20 kN. Carabiners complying with both EN 12275:1998 and EN 362:2004 are available. + +United States +Climbing and mountaineering: Minimum breaking strength (MBS) requirements and calculations for climbing and mountaineering carabiners in the USA are set out in ASTM Standard F1774. This standard calls for a MBS of 20kN on the long axis, and 7kN on the short axis (cross load). +Rescue: Carabiners used for rescue are addressed in ASTM F1956. This document addresses two classifications of carabiners, light use and heavy-duty. Light use carabiners are the most widely used, and are commonly found in applications including technical rope rescue, mountain rescue, cave rescue, cliff rescue, military, SWAT, and even by some non-NFPA fire departments. ASTM requirements for light use carabiners are 27 kN MBS on the long axis, 7kN on the short axis. Requirements for the lesser-used heavy duty rescue carabiners are 40kN MBS long axis, 10.68kN short axis. +Fire rescue: Minimum breaking strength requirements and calculations for rescue carabiners used by NFPA compliant agencies are set out in National Fire Protection Association standard 1983-2012 edition Fire Service Life Safety Rope and Equipment. The standard defines two classes of rescue carabiners. Technical use rescue carabiners are required to have minimum breaking strengths of 27 kN gate closed, 7 kN gate open and 7 kN minor axis. General use rescue carabiners are required to have minimum breaking strengths of 40 kN gate closed, 11 kN gate open and 11 kN minor axis. Testing procedures for rescue carabiners are set out in ASTM International standard F 1956 Standard Specification of Rescue Carabiners. +Fall protection: Carabiners used for fall protection in US industry are classified as "connectors" and are required to meet Occupational Safety and Health Administration standard 1910.66 App C Personal Fall Arrest System which specifies "drop forged, pressed or formed steel, or made of equivalent materials" and a minimum breaking strength of . + +American National Standards Institute/American Society of Safety Engineers standard ANSI Z359.1-2007 Safety Requirement for Personal Fall Arrest Systems, Subsystems and Components, section 3.2.1.4 (for snap hooks and carabiners) is a voluntary consensus standard. This standard requires that all connectors/ carabiners support a minimum breaking strength (MBS) of and feature an auto-locking gate mechanism which supports a minimum breaking strength (MBS) of . + +See also + Maillon + Lobster clasp + Rock-climbing equipment + Glossary of climbing terms + +References + +Climbing equipment +Caving equipment +German inventions +Mountaineering equipment +Fasteners +In fiction, continuity is the consistency of the characteristics of people, plot, objects, and places seen by the audience over some period of time. It is relevant to many genres and forms of storytelling, especially if it is long-running. + +Continuity is particularly a concern in the process of film and television production due to the difficulty in rectifying errors after filming ends. Continuity can also apply to other art forms, such as novels, comics, and video games, though usually on a smaller scale; it also applies to fiction used by persons, corporations, and governments in the public eye. + +Most film and TV productions have a script supervisor on hand whose job is to pay attention to and attempt to maintain continuity across the chaotic and typically non-linear production schedule. It is an inconspicuous job because if done well, none may ever notice. The script supervisor gathers numerous paperwork, photographs, and other documentation which note a large quantity of detail for maintaining the continuity of the production; Some of the gathered documents can be sometimes assembled into the story bible. The gathered information and photographs usually regard factors both within the scene and the technical details of the production, including meticulous records of camera positioning and equipment settings. Film-based Polaroid cameras were once standard but have since been replaced by digital cameras; all of this is, ideally, all related shots can match, due to filming being split up over months in different sets and locations. + +In comic books, continuity has also come to mean a set of contiguous events, sometimes said to be "set in the same universe." + +Continuity errors + +Many continuity errors are subtle, such as minor changes between shots (like the level of drink in a glass or the length of a cigarette); these minor errors often remain due to relative indifference to the final cut. While minor errors are often unnoticed by the average viewer, other errors may be more noticeable, such as sudden drastic changes in the appearance of a character. Productions will aim to prevent such errors in continuity because they can affect the audience's suspension of disbelief. + +In cinema, special attention must be paid to continuity because scenes are rarely shot in the order in which they appear in the final film. The shooting schedule is often dictated by location permit issues and other logistics. For example, a character may return to Times Square in New York City several times throughout a movie, but as it is extraordinarily expensive to close off Times Square, those scenes will likely be filmed all at once to reduce permit costs. Weather, the ambiance of natural light, cast and crew availability, or any number of other circumstances can also influence a shooting schedule. + +Measures against continuity errors in the film + +Film production companies use various techniques to prevent continuity errors. The first would be to film all the shots for a particular scene together and all shots of consecutive scenes together (if the scenes take place together, with no break between them in the film's timeline). This allows actors to remain in costume, in character, and in the same location (and with the same weather, if shooting on location). + +The second major technique is for costume designers, production designers, prop masters, and make-up artists to take instant photographs of actors and sets at the beginning and end of each day's shooting (once made possible by Polaroid cameras, now done with digital cameras and cell phones as well). This allows the various workers to check each day's clothing, set, props, and make-up against a previous day's. + +The third is to avoid shooting on location entirely but instead film everything on a studio set. This allows weather and lighting to be controlled (as the shooting is indoors), and for all clothing and sets to be stored in one place to be hauled out the next day from a secure location. + +The advent of advanced CGI has helped alleviate the challenge of preventing continuity errors from reaching the final cut, as it is easier to "airbrush" the errant drink glass or cigarette than it once was, albeit still not necessarily trivial. + +Editing errors +Editing errors can occur when a character in a scene references a scene or incident that has not occurred yet, or of which they should not yet be aware. + +An example of an editing error can be seen in the film It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World (1963), where a scene of people climbing a slope at the start is seen from below and then replayed from above. + +Visual errors +Visual errors are instant discontinuities occurring in visual media such as film and television. Items of clothing change colors, shadows get longer or shorter, items within a scene change place or disappear, etc. + +One of the earliest examples of a visual error appears in Charlie Chaplin's 1914 movie The Property Man. Here, in a supposedly smooth step from one room to another, the Tramp loses his hat in one room, but it is instantly back on his head as he enters the next room. Rather "loose" plots and a lack of continuity editing made most early films rife with such errors. + +Another example occurs in the 1998 film Waking Ned, when two of the film's characters, Jackie and Michael, are walking through a storm towards Ned's house. The umbrella they are under is black during their conversation as they walk towards the house (filmed from slightly above and to the front). However, after cutting to a lower shot (filmed from behind Jackie), Michael walks onscreen from the right holding an umbrella that is not black but beige, with a brown band at the rim. + +Another glaring example of poor continuity occurs in the Disney film Pete’s Dragon (filmed in 1976). During the song "Brazzle Dazzle Day" when Lampie (Mickey Rooney), Pete (Sean Marshall), and Nora (Helen Reddy) climb the stairs to the top of the lighthouse, Pete's shirt beneath his overalls is orange. But after descending to the bottom again and coming out of the lighthouse door, his shirt is now grey. + +Plot errors + +A plot error, or a plot hole as it is commonly known, reflects a failure in the consistency of the created fictional world. A character might state he was an only child, yet later mention a sibling. In the TV show Cheers, Frasier Crane's wife Lilith mentions Frasier's parents are both dead, and, in another episode, Frasier himself claims his father to have been a scientist. When the character was spun off into Frasier, his father, a retired policeman named Martin, became a central character. Eventually, in an episode featuring Cheers star Ted Danson, the inconsistency was given the retroactive explanation that Frasier was embarrassed about his father's lowbrow attitudes and thus claimed his death. This is a frequent occurrence in sitcoms, where networks may agree to continue a show, but only if a certain character is emphasized, leading other minor characters to be written out of the show with no further mention of the character's existence, while the emphasized character (usually a breakout character, as in the case of Frasier Crane) develops a more complete back story that ignores previous, more simplified backstories. + +Homeric nod + +A Homeric nod (sometimes heard as 'Even Homer nods') is a term for a continuity error that has its origins in Homeric epic. The proverbial phrase for it was coined by the Roman poet Horace in his Ars Poetica: "et idem indignor quandoque bonus dormitat Homerus" ("and yet I also become annoyed whenever the great Homer nods off"). + +There are numerous continuity errors in Homer that can be described as "nods", as for example: + +In Iliad, Menelaos kills a minor character, Pylaimenes, in combat. Pylaimenes is later still alive to witness the death of his son. +In Iliad 9.165-93 three characters, Phoinix, Odysseus, and Aias set out on an embassy to Achilleus; however, at line 182 the poet uses a verb in the dual form to indicate that there are only two people going; at lines 185ff. verbs in the plural form are used, indicating more than two; but another dual verb appears at line 192 ("the two of them came forward"). + +In modern Homeric scholarship, many of Homer's "nods" are explicable as the consequences of the poem being retold and improvised by generations of oral poets. In the second case cited above, it is likely that two different versions are being conflated: one version with an embassy of three people, another with just two people. +Alexander Pope was inclined to give Homeric nods the benefit of the doubt, saying in his Essay on Criticism that "Those oft are Stratagems which Errors seem, Nor is it Homer Nods, but We that Dream." + +Aging discrepancies +The practice of accelerating the age of a television character (usually a child or teenager) in conflict with the timeline of a series and/or the real-world progression of time is popularly known as Soap Opera Rapid Aging Syndrome, or SORAS. Children unseen on screen for a time might reappear portrayed by an actor several years older than the original. Usually coinciding with a recast, this rapid aging is typically done to open up the character to a wider range of storylines, and to attract younger viewers. A recent example of this occurring is in the BBC's Merlin series, in which Mordred is initially played by a young child in Season 4, yet suddenly grows up into his late teens in time for the start of Season 5, with the rest of the characters aging by only three years. + +The reverse can also happen. On the television program Lost, the character of 10-year-old Walt Lloyd was played by 12-year-old actor Malcolm David Kelley. The first few seasons took place over the course of just a few months, but by that point, Lloyd looked much older than 10. In his remaining few appearances, special effects were used to make him look younger, or the scene took place years later. + +Deliberate continuity errors + +Sometimes a work of fiction may deliberately employ continuity errors, usually for comedy. For example, in the Marx Brothers' classic film Duck Soup, at the climax of the film, the camera shows a shot of Groucho Marx speaking a line, followed by a cutaway shot of something else happening, followed by another shot of Groucho. Each time, Groucho's hat changes, usually to something more outrageous than before (a Napoleonic hat, a Prussian hat, etc.). + +Dealing with errors +When continuity mistakes have been made, explanations are often proposed by either writers or fans to smooth over discrepancies. Fans sometimes make up explanations for such errors that may or may not be integrated into canon; this has come to be colloquially known as fanwanking (a term originally coined by the author Craig Hinton to describe excessive use of continuity). Often when fans do not agree with one of the events in a story (such as the death of a favorite character), they will choose to ignore the event in question so that their enjoyment of the franchise is not diminished. When the holder of the intellectual property discards all existing continuity and starts from scratch, it is known as rebooting. Fans call a less extreme literary technique that erases one episode the reset button. See also fanon. + +A conflict with previously-established facts is sometimes deliberate; this is a retcon, as it is a retroactive change in continuity. Retcons sometimes clarify ambiguities or correct perceived errors. This is not to be confused with the continuance of a reality (continuality). + +Real-time programs vs. traditional films +Television programs like 24, in which actors have to appear as if it is the same day for 24 consecutive episodes, have raised public recognition of continuity. However, traditional films have frequently had much of the same sort of issues to deal with; film shoots may last several months, and as scenes are frequently shot out of story sequence, footage shot weeks apart may be edited together as part of the same day's action in the completed film. In some ways, 24 presents a simpler situation, as costumes and hairstyles generally should not change very frequently; in many feature films, a range of different hairstyles and costumes must be created, changed, and then recreated exactly, as various scenes are shot. + +Ageless characters + +Some fiction ignores continuity to allow characters to slow or stop the aging process, despite real-world markers like major social or technological changes. In comics this is sometimes referred to as a "floating timeline", where the fiction takes place in a "continuous present". Roz Kaveney suggests that comic books use this technique to satisfy "the commercial need to keep certain characters going forever". This is also due to the fact that the authors have no need to accommodate the aging of their characters, which is also typical of most animated television shows. Kevin Wanner compares the use of a sliding timescale in comics to the way ageless figures in myths are depicted interacting with the contemporary world of the storyteller. When certain stories in comics, especially origin stories, are rewritten, they often retain key events but are updated to a contemporary time, such as with the comic book character Tony Stark, who invents his Iron Man armor in a different war depending on when the story is told. + +References + +Further reading + + + + + + +Style (fiction) +Narratology +Phrases +Capital punishment, also known as the death penalty and formerly called judicial homicide, is the state-sanctioned practice of killing a person as a punishment for a crime, usually following an authorised, rule-governed process to conclude that the person is responsible for violating norms that warrant said punishment. The sentence ordering that an offender be punished in such a manner is known as a death sentence, and the act of carrying out the sentence is known as an execution. A prisoner who has been sentenced to death and awaits execution is condemned and is commonly referred to as being "on death row". Etymologically, the term capital (lit. "of the head", derived via the Latin from , "head") refers to execution by beheading, but executions are carried out by many methods, including hanging, shooting, lethal injection, stoning, electrocution, and gassing. + +Crimes that are punishable by death are known as capital crimes, capital offences, or capital felonies, and vary depending on the jurisdiction, but commonly include serious crimes against a person, such as assassination, mass murder, aggravated rape (often child sexual abuse), terrorism, aircraft hijacking, war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide, along with crimes against the state such as attempting to overthrow government, treason, espionage, sedition, and piracy. Also, in some cases, acts of recidivism, aggravated robbery, and kidnapping, in addition to drug trafficking, drug dealing, and drug possession, are capital crimes or enhancements. However, states have also imposed punitive executions, for an expansive range of conduct, for political or religious beliefs and practices, for a status beyond one's control, or without employing any significant due process procedures. Judicial murder is the intentional and premeditated killing of an innocent person by means of capital punishment. For example, the executions following the show trials in the Soviet Union during the Great Purge of 1936–1938 were an instrument of political repression. + +As of late 2022, 53 countries retain capital punishment, 111 countries have completely abolished it de jure for all crimes, seven have abolished it for ordinary crimes (while maintaining it for special circumstances such as war crimes), and 24 are abolitionist in practice. Although the majority of nations have abolished capital punishment, over 60% of the world's population live in countries where the death penalty is retained, such as China, India, the United States, Singapore, Indonesia, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nigeria, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Japan, and Taiwan. + +Capital punishment is controversial, with many people, organisations, and religious groups holding differing views on whether or not it is ethically permissible. Amnesty International declares that the death penalty breaches human rights, stating "the right to life and the right to live free from torture or cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment." These rights are protected under the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, adopted by the United Nations in 1948. In the European Union (EU), Article 2 of the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union prohibits the use of capital punishment. The Council of Europe, which has 46 member states, has sought to abolish the use of the death penalty by its members absolutely, through Protocol 13 of the European Convention on Human Rights. However, this only affects those member states which have signed and ratified it, and they do not include Armenia and Azerbaijan. The United Nations General Assembly has adopted, throughout the years from 2007 to 2020, eight non-binding resolutions calling for a global moratorium on executions, with a view to eventual abolition. + +History + +Execution of criminals and dissidents has been used by nearly all societies since the beginning of civilisations on Earth. Until the nineteenth century, without developed prison systems, there was frequently no workable alternative to ensure deterrence and incapacitation of criminals. In pre-modern times the executions themselves often involved torture with painful methods, such as the breaking wheel, keelhauling, sawing, hanging, drawing and quartering, burning at the stake, flaying, slow slicing, boiling alive, impalement, mazzatello, blowing from a gun, schwedentrunk, and scaphism. Other methods which appear only in legend include the blood eagle and brazen bull. + +The use of formal execution extends to the beginning of recorded history. Most historical records and various primitive tribal practices indicate that the death penalty was a part of their justice system. Communal punishments for wrongdoing generally included blood money compensation by the wrongdoer, corporal punishment, shunning, banishment and execution. In tribal societies, compensation and shunning were often considered enough as a form of justice. The response to crimes committed by neighbouring tribes, clans or communities included a formal apology, compensation, blood feuds, and tribal warfare. + +A blood feud or vendetta occurs when arbitration between families or tribes fails, or an arbitration system is non-existent. This form of justice was common before the emergence of an arbitration system based on state or organized religion. It may result from crime, land disputes or a code of honour. "Acts of retaliation underscore the ability of the social collective to defend itself and demonstrate to enemies (as well as potential allies) that injury to property, rights, or the person will not go unpunished." + +In most countries that practice capital punishment, it is now reserved for murder, terrorism, war crimes, espionage, treason, or as part of military justice. In some countries, sexual crimes, such as rape, fornication, adultery, incest, sodomy, and bestiality carry the death penalty, as do religious crimes such as Hudud, Zina, and Qisas crimes, such as apostasy (formal renunciation of the state religion), blasphemy, moharebeh, hirabah, Fasad, Mofsed-e-filarz and witchcraft. In many countries that use the death penalty, drug trafficking and often drug possession is also a capital offence. In China, human trafficking and serious cases of corruption and financial crimes are punished by the death penalty. In militaries around the world, courts-martial have imposed death sentences for offences such as cowardice, desertion, insubordination, and mutiny. + +Ancient history + +Elaborations of tribal arbitration of feuds included peace settlements often done in a religious context and compensation system. Compensation was based on the principle of substitution which might include material (for example, cattle, slaves, land) compensation, exchange of brides or grooms, or payment of the blood debt. Settlement rules could allow for animal blood to replace human blood, or transfers of property or blood money or in some case an offer of a person for execution. The person offered for execution did not have to be an original perpetrator of the crime because the social system was based on tribes and clans, not individuals. Blood feuds could be regulated at meetings, such as the Norsemen things. Systems deriving from blood feuds may survive alongside more advanced legal systems or be given recognition by courts (for example, trial by combat or blood money). One of the more modern refinements of the blood feud is the duel. + +In certain parts of the world, nations in the form of ancient republics, monarchies or tribal oligarchies emerged. These nations were often united by common linguistic, religious or family ties. Moreover, expansion of these nations often occurred by conquest of neighbouring tribes or nations. Consequently, various classes of royalty, nobility, various commoners and slaves emerged. Accordingly, the systems of tribal arbitration were submerged into a more unified system of justice which formalized the relation between the different "social classes" rather than "tribes". The earliest and most famous example is Code of Hammurabi which set the different punishment and compensation, according to the different class or group of victims and perpetrators. The Torah/Old Testament lays down the death penalty for murder, kidnapping, practicing magic, violation of the Sabbath, blasphemy, and a wide range of sexual crimes, although evidence suggests that actual executions were exceedingly rare, if they occurred at all. + +A further example comes from Ancient Greece, where the Athenian legal system replacing customary oral law was first written down by Draco in about 621 BC: the death penalty was applied for a particularly wide range of crimes, though Solon later repealed Draco's code and published new laws, retaining capital punishment only for intentional homicide, and only with victim's family permission. The word draconian derives from Draco's laws. The Romans also used the death penalty for a wide range of offences. + +Ancient Greece + +Protagoras (whose thought is reported by Plato) criticised the principle of revenge, because once the damage is done it cannot be cancelled by any action. So, if the death penalty is to be imposed by society, it is only to protect the latter against the criminal or for a dissuasive purpose. "The only right that Protagoras knows is therefore human right, which, established and sanctioned by a sovereign collectivity, identifies itself with positive or the law in force of the city. In fact, it finds its guarantee in the death penalty which threatens all those who do not respect it." + +Plato saw the death penalty as a means of purification, because crimes are a "defilement". Thus, in the Laws, he considered necessary the execution of the animal or the destruction of the object which caused the death of a man by accident. For the murderers, he considered that the act of homicide is not natural and is not fully consented by the criminal. Homicide is thus a disease of the soul, which must be reeducated as much as possible, and, as a last resort, sentence to death if no rehabilitation is possible. + +According to Aristotle, for whom free will is proper to man, a person is responsible for their actions. If there was a crime, a judge must define the penalty allowing the crime to be annulled by compensating it. This is how pecuniary compensation appeared for criminals the least recalcitrant and whose rehabilitation is deemed possible. However, for others, he argued, the death penalty is necessary. + +This philosophy aims on the one hand to protect society and on the other hand to compensate to cancel the consequences of the crime committed. It inspired Western criminal law until the 17th century, a time when the first reflections on the abolition of the death penalty appeared. + +Ancient Rome +In ancient Rome, the application of the death penalty against Roman citizens was unusual and considered exceptional. They preferred alternative sentences ranging, depending on the crime and the criminal, from private or public reprimand to exile, including the confiscation of their property, or torture, or even prison, and as a last resort, death.. + +A historic debate, followed by a vote, took place in the Roman Senate to decide the fate of Catiline's allies when he attempted to seize power in December −63. Then Roman consul, argued in support of the killing of conspirators without judgment by decision of the Senate (Senatus consultum ultimum) and was supported by the majority of senators; among the minority voices opposed to the execution, the most notable was Julius Caesar. The custom was different for foreigners, as they were considered inferior to Roman citizens, and especially for slaves, who were transferrable property. + +An excruciating slow death by crucifixion was widely practiced by the Romans. Intended to be a punishment, a humiliation, and a deterrent, the condemned could take up to a few days to die. Corpses of the crucified were typically left on the crosses to decompose and to be eaten by animals. + +China +Although many are executed in the People's Republic of China each year in the present day, there was a time in the Tang dynasty (618–907) when the death penalty was abolished. This was in the year 747, enacted by Emperor Xuanzong of Tang (r. 712–756). When abolishing the death penalty, Xuanzong ordered his officials to refer to the nearest regulation by analogy when sentencing those found guilty of crimes for which the prescribed punishment was execution. Thus, depending on the severity of the crime a punishment of severe scourging with the thick rod or of exile to the remote Lingnan region might take the place of capital punishment. However, the death penalty was restored only 12 years later in 759 in response to the An Lushan Rebellion. At this time in the Tang dynasty only the emperor had the authority to sentence criminals to execution. Under Xuanzong capital punishment was relatively infrequent, with only 24 executions in the year 730 and 58 executions in the year 736. + +The two most common forms of execution in the Tang dynasty were strangulation and decapitation, which were the prescribed methods of execution for 144 and 89 offences respectively. Strangulation was the prescribed sentence for lodging an accusation against one's parents or grandparents with a magistrate, scheming to kidnap a person and sell them into slavery and opening a coffin while desecrating a tomb. Decapitation was the method of execution prescribed for more serious crimes such as treason and sedition. Despite the great discomfort involved, most of the Tang Chinese preferred strangulation to decapitation, as a result of the traditional Tang Chinese belief that the body is a gift from the parents and that it is, therefore, disrespectful to one's ancestors to die without returning one's body to the grave intact. + +Some further forms of capital punishment were practiced in the Tang dynasty, of which the first two that follow at least were extralegal. The first of these was scourging to death with the thick rod which was common throughout the Tang dynasty especially in cases of gross corruption. The second was truncation, in which the convicted person was cut in two at the waist with a fodder knife and then left to bleed to death. A further form of execution called Ling Chi (slow slicing), or death by/of a thousand cuts, was used from the close of the Tang dynasty (around 900) to its abolition in 1905. + +When a minister of the fifth grade or above received a death sentence the emperor might grant him a special dispensation allowing him to commit suicide in lieu of execution. Even when this privilege was not granted, the law required that the condemned minister be provided with food and ale by his keepers and transported to the execution ground in a cart rather than having to walk there. + +Nearly all executions under the Tang dynasty took place in public as a warning to the population. The heads of the executed were displayed on poles or spears. When local authorities decapitated a convicted criminal, the head was boxed and sent to the capital as proof of identity and that the execution had taken place. + +Middle Ages + +In medieval and early modern Europe, before the development of modern prison systems, the death penalty was also used as a generalised form of punishment for even minor offences. + +In early modern Europe, a mass panic regarding witchcraft swept across Europe and later the European colonies in North America. During this period, there were widespread claims that malevolent Satanic witches were operating as an organised threat to Christendom. As a result, tens of thousands of women were prosecuted for witchcraft and executed through the witch trials of the early modern period (between the 15th and 18th centuries). + +The death penalty also targeted sexual offences such as sodomy. In the early history of Islam (7th–11th centuries), there is a number of "purported (but mutually inconsistent) reports" (athar) regarding the punishments of sodomy ordered by some of the early caliphs. Abu Bakr, the first caliph of the Rashidun Caliphate, apparently recommended toppling a wall on the culprit, or else burning him alive, while Ali ibn Abi Talib is said to have ordered death by stoning for one sodomite and had another thrown head-first from the top of the highest building in the town; according to Ibn Abbas, the latter punishment must be followed by stoning. Other medieval Muslim leaders, such as the Abbasid caliphs in Baghdad (most notably al-Mu'tadid), were often cruel in their punishments. In early modern England, the Buggery Act 1533 stipulated hanging as punishment for "buggery". James Pratt and John Smith were the last two Englishmen to be executed for sodomy in 1835. In 1636 the laws of Puritan governed Plymouth Colony included a sentence of death for sodomy and buggery. The Massachusetts Bay Colony followed in 1641. Throughout the 19th century, U.S. states repealed death sentences from their sodomy laws, with South Carolina being the last to do so in 1873. + +Historians recognise that during the Early Middle Ages, the Christian populations living in the lands invaded by the Arab Muslim armies between the 7th and 10th centuries suffered religious discrimination, religious persecution, religious violence, and martyrdom multiple times at the hands of Arab Muslim officials and rulers. As People of the Book, Christians under Muslim rule were subjected to dhimmi status (along with Jews, Samaritans, Gnostics, Mandeans, and Zoroastrians), which was inferior to the status of Muslims. Christians and other religious minorities thus faced religious discrimination and religious persecution in that they were banned from proselytising (for Christians, it was forbidden to evangelise or spread Christianity) in the lands invaded by the Arab Muslims on pain of death, they were banned from bearing arms, undertaking certain professions, and were obligated to dress differently in order to distinguish themselves from Arabs. Under sharia, Non-Muslims were obligated to pay jizya and kharaj taxes, together with periodic heavy ransom levied upon Christian communities by Muslim rulers in order to fund military campaigns, all of which contributed a significant proportion of income to the Islamic states while conversely reducing many Christians to poverty, and these financial and social hardships forced many Christians to convert to Islam. Christians unable to pay these taxes were forced to surrender their children to the Muslim rulers as payment who would sell them as slaves to Muslim households where they were forced to convert to Islam. Many Christian martyrs were executed under the Islamic death penalty for defending their Christian faith through dramatic acts of resistance such as refusing to convert to Islam, repudiation of the Islamic religion and subsequent reconversion to Christianity, and blasphemy towards Muslim beliefs. + +Despite the wide use of the death penalty, calls for reform were not unknown. The 12th-century Jewish legal scholar Moses Maimonides wrote: "It is better and more satisfactory to acquit a thousand guilty persons than to put a single innocent man to death." He argued that executing an accused criminal on anything less than absolute certainty would lead to a slippery slope of decreasing burdens of proof, until we would be convicting merely "according to the judge's caprice". Maimonides's concern was maintaining popular respect for law, and he saw errors of commission as much more threatening than errors of omission. + +Enlightenment philosophy +While during the Middle Ages the expiatory aspect of the death penalty was taken into account, this is no longer the case under the Lumières. These define the place of man within society no longer according to a divine rule, but as a contract established at birth between the citizen and the society, it is the social contract. From that moment on, capital punishment should be seen as useful to society through its dissuasive effect, but also as a means of protection of the latter vis-à-vis criminals. + +Modern era + +In the last several centuries, with the emergence of modern nation states, justice came to be increasingly associated with the concept of natural and legal rights. The period saw an increase in standing police forces and permanent penitential institutions. Rational choice theory, a utilitarian approach to criminology which justifies punishment as a form of deterrence as opposed to retribution, can be traced back to Cesare Beccaria, whose influential treatise On Crimes and Punishments (1764) was the first detailed analysis of capital punishment to demand the abolition of the death penalty. In England, Jeremy Bentham (1748–1832), the founder of modern utilitarianism, called for the abolition of the death penalty. Beccaria, and later Charles Dickens and Karl Marx noted the incidence of increased violent criminality at the times and places of executions. Official recognition of this phenomenon led to executions being carried out inside prisons, away from public view. + +In England in the 18th century, when there was no police force, Parliament drastically increased the number of capital offences to more than 200. These were mainly property offences, for example cutting down a cherry tree in an orchard. In 1820, there were 160, including crimes such as shoplifting, petty theft or stealing cattle. The severity of the so-called Bloody Code was often tempered by juries who refused to convict, or judges, in the case of petty theft, who arbitrarily set the value stolen at below the statutory level for a capital crime. + +20th century + +In Nazi Germany, there were three types of capital punishment; hanging, decapitation, and death by shooting. Also, modern military organisations employed capital punishment as a means of maintaining military discipline. In the past, cowardice, absence without leave, desertion, insubordination, shirking under enemy fire and disobeying orders were often crimes punishable by death (see decimation and running the gauntlet). One method of execution, since firearms came into common use, has also been firing squad, although some countries use execution with a single shot to the head or neck. + +Various authoritarian states—for example those with Fascist or Communist governments—employed the death penalty as a potent means of political oppression. According to Robert Conquest, the leading expert on Joseph Stalin's purges, more than one million Soviet citizens were executed during the Great Purge of 1936 to 1938, almost all by a bullet to the back of the head. Mao Zedong publicly stated that "800,000" people had been executed in China during the Cultural Revolution (1966–1976). Partly as a response to such excesses, civil rights organisations started to place increasing emphasis on the concept of human rights and an abolition of the death penalty. + +Contemporary era +By continent, all European states but one have abolished capital punishment; many Oceanian states have abolished it; most states in the Americas have abolished its use, while a few actively retain it; less than half of countries in Africa retain it; and the majority of countries in Asia retain it. + +Abolition was often adopted due to political change, as when countries shifted from authoritarianism to democracy, or when it became an entry condition for the EU. The United States is a notable exception: some states have had bans on capital punishment for decades, the earliest being Michigan, where it was abolished in 1846, while other states still actively use it today. The death penalty in the United States remains a contentious issue which is hotly debated. + +In retentionist countries, the debate is sometimes revived when a miscarriage of justice has occurred though this tends to cause legislative efforts to improve the judicial process rather than to abolish the death penalty. In abolitionist countries, the debate is sometimes revived by particularly brutal murders, though few countries have brought it back after abolishing it. However, a spike in serious, violent crimes, such as murders or terrorist attacks, has prompted some countries to effectively end the moratorium on the death penalty. One notable example is Pakistan which in December 2014 lifted a six-year moratorium on executions after the Peshawar school massacre during which 132 students and 9 members of staff of the Army Public School and Degree College Peshawar were killed by Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan terrorists, a group distinct from the Afghan Taliban, who condemned the attack. +Since then, Pakistan has executed over 400 convicts. + +In 2017, two major countries, Turkey and the Philippines, saw their executives making moves to reinstate the death penalty. In the same year, passage of the law in the Philippines failed to obtain the Senate's approval. + +On 29 December 2021, after a 20-year moratorium, the Kazakhstan government enacted the 'On Amendments and Additions to Certain Legislative Acts of the Republic of Kazakhstan on the Abolition of the Death Penalty' signed by President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev as part of series of Omnibus reformations of the Kazak legal system 'Listening State' initiative. + +History of abolition + +In 724 AD in Japan, the death penalty was banned during the reign of Emperor Shōmu but the abolition only lasted a few years. In 818, Emperor Saga abolished the death penalty under the influence of Shinto and it lasted until 1156. In China, the death penalty was banned by Emperor Xuanzong of Tang in 747, replacing it with exile or scourging. However, the ban only lasted 12 years. Following his conversion to Christianity in 988, Vladimir the Great abolished the death penalty in Kievan Rus', along with torture and mutilation; corporal punishment was also seldom used. + +In England, a public statement of opposition was included in The Twelve Conclusions of the Lollards, written in 1395. Sir Thomas More's Utopia, published in 1516, debated the benefits of the death penalty in dialogue form, coming to no firm conclusion. More was himself executed for treason in 1535. + +More recent opposition to the death penalty stemmed from the book of the Italian Cesare Beccaria Dei Delitti e Delle Pene ("On Crimes and Punishments"), published in 1764. In this book, Beccaria aimed to demonstrate not only the injustice, but even the futility from the point of view of social welfare, of torture and the death penalty. Influenced by the book, Grand Duke Leopold II of Habsburg, the future Emperor of Austria, abolished the death penalty in the then-independent Grand Duchy of Tuscany, the first permanent abolition in modern times. On 30 November 1786, after having de facto blocked executions (the last was in 1769), Leopold promulgated the reform of the penal code that abolished the death penalty and ordered the destruction of all the instruments for capital execution in his land. In 2000, Tuscany's regional authorities instituted an annual holiday on 30 November to commemorate the event. The event is commemorated on this day by 300 cities around the world celebrating Cities for Life Day. In the United Kingdom, it was abolished for murder (leaving only treason, piracy with violence, arson in royal dockyards and a number of wartime military offences as capital crimes) for a five-year experiment in 1965 and permanently in 1969, the last execution having taken place in 1964. It was abolished for all offences in 1998. Protocol 13 to the European Convention on Human Rights, first entering into force in 2003, prohibits the death penalty in all circumstances for those states that are party to it, including the United Kingdom from 2004. + +In the post-classical Republic of Poljica, life was ensured as a basic right in its Poljica Statute of 1440. The short-lived revolutionary Roman Republic banned capital punishment in 1849. Venezuela followed suit and abolished the death penalty in 1863 and San Marino did so in 1865. The last execution in San Marino had taken place in 1468. In Portugal, after legislative proposals in 1852 and 1863, the death penalty was abolished in 1867. The last execution in Brazil was 1876; from then on all the condemnations were commuted by the Emperor Pedro II until its abolition for civil offences and military offences in peacetime in 1891. The penalty for crimes committed in peacetime was then reinstated and abolished again twice (1938–1953 and 1969–1978), but on those occasions it was restricted to acts of terrorism or subversion considered "internal warfare" and all sentences were commuted and not carried out. + +Abolition occurred in Canada in 1976 (except for some military offences, with complete abolition in 1998); in France in 1981; and in Australia in 1973 (although the state of Western Australia retained the penalty until 1984). In South Australia, under the premiership of then-Premier Dunstan, the Criminal Law Consolidation Act 1935 (SA) was modified so that the death sentence was changed to life imprisonment in 1976. + +In 1977, the United Nations General Assembly affirmed in a formal resolution that throughout the world, it is desirable to "progressively restrict the number of offences for which the death penalty might be imposed, with a view to the desirability of abolishing this punishment". + +In the United States, Michigan was the first state to ban the death penalty, on 18 May 1846. The death penalty was declared unconstitutional between 1972 and 1976 based on the Furman v. Georgia case, but the 1976 Gregg v. Georgia case once again permitted the death penalty under certain circumstances. Further limitations were placed on the death penalty in Atkins v. Virginia (2002; death penalty unconstitutional for people with an intellectual disability) and Roper v. Simmons (2005; death penalty unconstitutional if defendant was under age 18 at the time the crime was committed). In the United States, 23 of the 50 states and Washington, D.C. ban capital punishment. + +Many countries have abolished capital punishment either in law or in practice. Since World War II, there has been a trend toward abolishing capital punishment. Capital punishment has been completely abolished by 108 countries, a further seven have done so for all offences except under special circumstances and 26 more have abolished it in practice because they have not used it for at least 10 years and are believed to have a policy or established practice against carrying out executions. + +Contemporary use + +By country + +Most nations, including almost all developed countries, have abolished capital punishment either in law or in practice; notable exceptions are the United States, Japan, Taiwan, and Singapore. Additionally, capital punishment is also carried out in China, India, and most Islamic states. + +Since World War II, there has been a trend toward abolishing the death penalty. 54 countries retain the death penalty in active use, 112 countries have abolished capital punishment altogether, 7 have done so for all offences except under special circumstances, and 22 more have abolished it in practice because they have not used it for at least 10 years and are believed to have a policy or established practice against carrying out executions. + +According to Amnesty International, 20 countries are known to have performed executions in 2022. There are countries which do not publish information on the use of capital punishment, most significantly China and North Korea. According to Amnesty International, around 1,000 prisoners were executed in 2017. Amnesty reported in 2004 and 2009 that Singapore and Iraq respectively had the world's highest per capita execution rate. According to Al Jazeera and UN Special Rapporteur Ahmed Shaheed, Iran has had the world's highest per capita execution rate. A 2012 EU report from the Directorate-General for External Relations' policy department pointed to Gaza as having the highest per capita execution rate in the MENA region. + +The use of the death penalty is becoming increasingly restrained in some retentionist countries including Taiwan and Singapore. Indonesia carried out no executions between November 2008 and March 2013. Singapore, Japan and the United States are the only developed countries that are classified by Amnesty International as 'retentionist' (South Korea is classified as 'abolitionist in practice'). Nearly all retentionist countries are situated in Asia, Africa and the Caribbean. The only retentionist country in Europe is Belarus. During the 1980s, the democratisation of Latin America swelled the ranks of abolitionist countries. + +This was soon followed by the fall of communism in Europe. Many of the countries which restored democracy aspired to enter the EU. The EU and the Council of Europe both strictly require member states not to practice the death penalty (see Capital punishment in Europe). Public support for the death penalty in the EU varies. The last execution in a member state of the present-day Council of Europe took place in 1997 in Ukraine. In contrast, the rapid industrialisation in Asia has seen an increase in the number of developed countries which are also retentionist. In these countries, the death penalty retains strong public support, and the matter receives little attention from the government or the media; in China there is a small but significant and growing movement to abolish the death penalty altogether. This trend has been followed by some African and Middle Eastern countries where support for the death penalty remains high. + +Some countries have resumed practising the death penalty after having previously suspended the practice for long periods. The United States suspended executions in 1972 but resumed them in 1976; there was no execution in India between 1995 and 2004; and Sri Lanka declared an end to its moratorium on the death penalty on 20 November 2004, although it has not yet performed any further executions. The Philippines re-introduced the death penalty in 1993 after abolishing it in 1987, but again abolished it in 2006. + +The United States and Japan are the only developed countries to have recently carried out executions. The U.S. federal government, the U.S. military, and 27 states have a valid death penalty statute, and over 1,400 executions have been carried in the United States since it reinstated the death penalty in 1976. Japan has 107 inmates with finalized death sentences , after Toshihiko Iwama, who was convicted of hiring assassin to murder two Japanese businessmen in Manila, Philippines in 2014 and 2015, died of diabetic symptoms at Tokyo Detention House. + +The most recent country to abolish the death penalty was Kazakhstan on 2 January 2021 after a moratorium dating back 2 decades. + +According to an Amnesty International report released in April 2020, Egypt ranked regionally third and globally fifth among the countries that carried out most executions in 2019. The country increasingly ignored international human rights concerns and criticism. In March 2021, Egypt executed 11 prisoners in a jail, who were convicted in cases of "murder, theft, and shooting". + +According to Amnesty International's 2021 report, at least 483 people were executed in 2020 despite the COVID-19 pandemic. The figure excluded the countries that classify death penalty data as state secret. The top five executioners for 2020 were China, Iran, Egypt, Iraq and Saudi Arabia. + +Modern-day public opinion +The public opinion on the death penalty varies considerably by country and by the crime in question. Countries where a majority of people are against execution include Norway, where only 25% support it. Most French, Finns, and Italians also oppose the death penalty. In 2020, 55% of Americans supported the death penalty for an individual convicted of murder, down from 60% in 2016, 64% in 2010, 65% in 2006, and 68% in 2001. In 2020, 43% of Italians expressed support for the death penalty. + +In Taiwan, polls and research have consistently shown strong support for the death penalty at 80%. This includes a survey conducted by the National Development Council of Taiwan in 2016, showing that 88% of Taiwanese people disagree with abolishing the death penalty. Its continuation of the practice drew criticism from local rights groups. + +The support and sentencing of capital punishment has been growing in India in the 2010s due to anger over several recent brutal cases of rape, even though actual executions are comparatively rare. While support for the death penalty for murder is still high in China, executions have dropped precipitously, with 3,000 executed in 2012 versus 12,000 in 2002. A poll in South Africa, where capital punishment is abolished, found that 76% of millennial South Africans support re-introduction of the death penalty due to increasing incidents of rape and murder. +A 2017 poll found younger Mexicans are more likely to support capital punishment than older ones. 57% of Brazilians support the death penalty. The age group that shows the greatest support for execution of those condemned is the 25 to 34-year-old category, in which 61% say they support it. + +A 2023 poll by Research Co. found that 54 percent of Canadians support reinstating the death penalty for murder in their country. In April 2021 a poll found that 54% of Britons said they would support reinstating the death penalty for those convicted of terrorism in the UK. About a quarter (23%) of respondents said they would be opposed. In 2020, an Ipsos/Sopra Steria survey showed that 55% of the French people support re-introduction of the death penalty; this was an increase from 44% in 2019. + +Juvenile offenders + +The death penalty for juvenile offenders (criminals aged under 18 years at the time of their crime although the legal or accepted definition of juvenile offender may vary from one jurisdiction to another) has become increasingly rare. Considering the age of majority is not 18 in some countries or has not been clearly defined in law, since 1990 ten countries have executed offenders who were considered juveniles at the time of their crimes: The People's Republic of China (PRC), Bangladesh, Democratic Republic of Congo, Iran, Iraq, Japan, Nigeria, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, the United States, and Yemen. China, Pakistan, the United States, Saudi Arabia, and Yemen have since raised the minimum age to 18. Amnesty International has recorded 61 verified executions since then, in several countries, of both juveniles and adults who had been convicted of committing their offences as juveniles. The PRC does not allow for the execution of those under 18, but child executions have reportedly taken place. + +One of the youngest children ever to be executed was the infant son of Perotine Massey on or around 18 July 1556. His mother was one of the Guernsey Martyrs who was executed for heresy, and his father had previously fled the island. At less than one day old, he was ordered to be burned by Bailiff Hellier Gosselin, with the advice of priests nearby who said the boy should burn due to having inherited moral stain from his mother, who had given birth during her execution. + +Starting from 1642 in Colonial America until the present day in the United States, an estimated 365 juvenile offenders were executed by various colonial authorities and (after the American Revolution) the federal government. The U.S. Supreme Court abolished capital punishment for offenders under the age of 16 in Thompson v. Oklahoma (1988), and for all juveniles in Roper v. Simmons (2005). + +In Prussia, children under the age of 14 were exempted from the death penalty in 1794. Capital punishment was cancelled by the Electorate of Bavaria in 1751 for children under the age of 11 and by the Kingdom of Bavaria in 1813 for children and youth under 16 years. In Prussia, the exemption was extended to youth under the age of 16 in 1851. For the first time, all juveniles were excluded for the death penalty by the North German Confederation in 1871, which was continued by the German Empire in 1872. In Nazi Germany, capital punishment was reinstated for juveniles between 16 and 17 years in 1939. This was broadened to children and youth from age 12 to 17 in 1943. The death penalty for juveniles was abolished by West Germany, also generally, in 1949 and by East Germany in 1952. + +In the Hereditary Lands, Austrian Silesia, Bohemia and Moravia within the Habsburg monarchy, capital punishment for children under the age of 11 was no longer foreseen by 1770. The death penalty was, also for juveniles, nearly abolished in 1787 except for emergency or military law, which is unclear in regard of those. It was reintroduced for juveniles above 14 years by 1803, and was raised by general criminal law to 20 years in 1852 and this exemption and the alike one of military law in 1855, which may have been up to 14 years in wartime, were also introduced into all of the Austrian Empire. + +In the Helvetic Republic, the death penalty for children and youth under the age of 16 was abolished in 1799 yet the country was already dissolved in 1803 whereas the law could remain in force if it was not replaced on cantonal level. In the canton of Bern, all juveniles were exempted from the death penalty at least in 1866. In Fribourg, capital punishment was generally, including for juveniles, abolished by 1849. In Ticino, it was abolished for youth and young adults under the age of 20 in 1816. In Zurich, the exclusion from the death penalty was extended for juveniles and young adults up to 19 years of age by 1835. In 1942, the death penalty was almost deleted in criminal law, as well for juveniles, but since 1928 persisted in military law during wartime for youth above 14 years. If no earlier change was made in the given subject, by 1979 juveniles could no longer be subject to the death penalty in military law during wartime. + +Between 2005 and May 2008, Iran, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Sudan and Yemen were reported to have executed child offenders, the largest number occurring in Iran. + +During Hassan Rouhani's tenure as president of Iran from 2013 until 2021, at least 3,602 death sentences have been carried out. This includes the executions of 34 juvenile offenders. + +The United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, which forbids capital punishment for juveniles under article 37(a), has been signed by all countries and subsequently ratified by all signatories with the exception of the United States (despite the US Supreme Court decisions abolishing the practice). The UN Sub-Commission on the Promotion and Protection of Human Rights maintains that the death penalty for juveniles has become contrary to a jus cogens of customary international law. A majority of countries are also party to the U.N. International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (whose Article 6.5 also states that "Sentence of death shall not be imposed for crimes committed by persons below eighteen years of age..."). + +Iran, despite its ratification of the Convention on the Rights of the Child and International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, was the world's largest executioner of juvenile offenders, for which it has been the subject of broad international condemnation; the country's record is the focus of the Stop Child Executions Campaign. But on 10 February 2012, Iran's parliament changed controversial laws relating to the execution of juveniles. In the new legislation the age of 18 (solar year) would be applied to accused of both genders and juvenile offenders must be sentenced pursuant to a separate law specifically dealing with juveniles. Based on the Islamic law which now seems to have been revised, girls at the age of 9 and boys at 15 of lunar year (11 days shorter than a solar year) are deemed fully responsible for their crimes. Iran accounted for two-thirds of the global total of such executions, and currently has approximately 140 people considered as juveniles awaiting execution for crimes committed (up from 71 in 2007). The past executions of Mahmoud Asgari, Ayaz Marhoni and Makwan Moloudzadeh became the focus of Iran's child capital punishment policy and the judicial system that hands down such sentences. + +Saudi Arabia also executes criminals who were minors at the time of the offence. In 2013, Saudi Arabia was the center of an international controversy after it executed Rizana Nafeek, a Sri Lankan domestic worker, who was believed to have been 17 years old at the time of the crime. Saudi Arabia banned execution for minors, except for terrorism cases, in April 2020. + +Japan has not executed juvenile criminals after August 1997, when they executed Norio Nagayama, a spree killer who had been convicted of shooting four people dead in the late 1960s. Nagayama's case created the eponymously named Nagayama standards, which take into account factors such as the number of victims, brutality and social impact of the crimes. The standards have been used in determining whether to apply the death sentence in murder cases. Teruhiko Seki, convicted of murdering four family members including a 4-year-old daughter and raping a 15-year-old daughter of a family in 1992, became the second inmate to be hanged for a crime committed as a minor in the first such execution in 20 years after Nagayama on 19 December 2017. Takayuki Otsuki, who was convicted of raping and strangling a 23-year-old woman and subsequently strangling her 11-month-old daughter to death on 14 April 1999, when he was 18, is another inmate sentenced to death, and his request for retrial has been rejected by the Supreme Court of Japan. + +There is evidence that child executions are taking place in the parts of Somalia controlled by the Islamic Courts Union (ICU). In October 2008, a girl, Aisha Ibrahim Dhuhulow was buried up to her neck at a football stadium, then stoned to death in front of more than 1,000 people. Somalia's established Transitional Federal Government announced in November 2009 (reiterated in 2013) that it plans to ratify the Convention on the Rights of the Child. This move was lauded by UNICEF as a welcome attempt to secure children's rights in the country. + +Methods + +The following methods of execution have been used by various countries: + Hanging (Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq, Japan, South Korea, Malaysia, Nigeria, Sudan, Pakistan, Palestinian National Authority, Israel, Yemen, Egypt, India, Myanmar, Singapore, Sri Lanka, Syria, the UAE, Zimbabwe, Malawi, Liberia) + Shooting (the People's Republic of China, Republic of China, Vietnam, Belarus, Ethiopia, Nigeria, Somalia, North Korea, Indonesia, the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Qatar, Yemen, and in the US states of Oklahoma and Utah). + Lethal injection (United States, Guatemala, Thailand, the People's Republic of China, Vietnam) + Beheading (Saudi Arabia) + Stoning (Nigeria, Sudan) + Electrocution and gas inhalation (some U.S. states, but only if the prisoner requests it or if lethal injection is unavailable) +Inert gas asphyxiation (Some U.S. states, Oklahoma, Mississippi, Alabama) + +Public execution + +A public execution is a form of capital punishment which "members of the general public may voluntarily attend". This definition excludes the presence of a small number of witnesses randomly selected to assure executive accountability. While today the great majority of the world considers public executions to be distasteful and most countries have outlawed the practice, throughout much of history executions were performed publicly as a means for the state to demonstrate "its power before those who fell under its jurisdiction be they criminals, enemies, or political opponents". Additionally, it afforded the public a chance to witness "what was considered a great spectacle". + +Social historians note that beginning in the 20th century in the U.S. and western Europe, death in general became increasingly shielded from public view, occurring more and more behind the closed doors of the hospital. Executions were likewise moved behind the walls of the penitentiary. The last formal public executions occurred in 1868 in Britain, in 1936 in the U.S. and in 1939 in France. + +According to Amnesty International, in 2012, "public executions were known to have been carried out in Iran, North Korea, Saudi Arabia and Somalia". There have been reports of public executions carried out by state and non-state actors in Hamas-controlled Gaza, Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, and Yemen. Executions which can be classified as public were also carried out in the U.S. states of Florida and Utah . + +Capital crime + +Crimes against humanity +Crimes against humanity such as genocide are usually punishable by death in countries retaining capital punishment. Death sentences for such crimes were handed down and carried out during the Nuremberg Trials in 1946 and the Tokyo Trials in 1948, but the current International Criminal Court does not use capital punishment. The maximum penalty available to the International Criminal Court is life imprisonment. + +Murder +Intentional homicide is punishable by death in most countries retaining capital punishment, but generally provided it involves an aggravating factor required by statute or judicial precedents. + +Some countries, including Singapore and Malaysia, made the death penalty mandatory for murder, though Singapore later changed its laws since 2013 to reserve the mandatory death sentence for intentional murder while providing an alternative sentence of life imprisonment with/without caning for murder with no intention to cause death, which allowed some convicted murderers on death row in Singapore (including Kho Jabing) to apply for the reduction of their death sentences after the courts in Singapore confirmed that they committed murder without the intention to kill and thus eligible for re-sentencing under the new death penalty laws in Singapore. In October 2018 the Malaysian Government imposed a moratorium on all executions until the passage of a new law that would abolish the death penalty. In April 2023, legislation abolishing the mandatory death penalty was passed in Malaysia. The death penalty would be retained, but courts have the discretion to replace it with other punishments, including whipping and imprisonment of 30–40 years. + +Drug trafficking + +In 2018, at least 35 countries retained the death penalty for drug trafficking, drug dealing, drug possession and related offences. People had been regularly sentenced to death and executed for drug-related offences in China, Indonesia, Iran, Malaysia, Saudi Arabia, Singapore and Vietnam. Other countries may retain the death penalty for symbolic purposes. + +The death penalty was mandated for drug trafficking in Singapore and Malaysia. Since 2013, Singapore ruled that those who were certified to have diminished responsibility (e.g. Major depressive disorder) or acting as drug couriers and had assisted the authorities in tackling drug-related activities, would be sentenced to life imprisonment instead of death, with the offender liable to at least 15 strokes of the cane if he was not sentenced to death and was simultaneously sentenced to caning as well. Drug courier Yong Vui Kong's death sentence was replaced with a life sentence and 15 strokes of the cane in November 2013. In April 2023, legislation abolishing the mandatory death penalty was passed in Malaysia. + +Other offences + +Other crimes that are punishable by death in some countries include: +Terrorism +Treason (a capital crime in most countries that retain capital punishment) +Espionage +Crimes against the state, such as attempting to overthrow government (most countries with the death penalty) +Political protests (Saudi Arabia) +Rape (China, India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Iran, Saudi Arabia, UAE, Qatar, Brunei, etc.) +Economic crimes (China, Iran) +Human trafficking (China) +Corruption (China, Iran) +Kidnapping (China, Bangladesh, the US states of Georgia and Idaho, etc.) +Separatism (China) +Unlawful sexual behaviour (Saudi Arabia, Iran, UAE, Qatar, Brunei, Nigeria, etc.) +Religious Hudud offences such as apostasy (Saudi Arabia, Iran, Afghanistan etc.) +Blasphemy (Saudi Arabia, Iran, Pakistan, certain states in Nigeria) +Moharebeh (Iran) +Drinking alcohol (Iran) +Witchcraft and sorcery (Saudi Arabia) +Arson (Algeria, Tunisia, Mali, Mauritania, etc.) +Hirabah; brigandage; armed or aggravated robbery (Algeria, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Kenya, Zambia, Ethiopia, the US state of Georgia etc.) + +Controversy and debate + +Death penalty opponents regard the death penalty as inhumane and criticize it for its irreversibility. They argue also that capital punishment lacks deterrent effect, or has a brutalization effect, discriminates against minorities and the poor, and that it encourages a "culture of violence". There are many organizations worldwide, such as Amnesty International, and country-specific, such as the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), that have abolition of the death penalty as its main purpose. + +Advocates of the death penalty argue that it deters crime, is a good tool for police and prosecutors in plea bargaining, makes sure that convicted criminals do not offend again, and that it ensures justice for crimes such as homicide, where other penalties will not inflict the desired retribution demanded by the crime itself. Capital punishment for non-lethal crimes is usually considerably more controversial, and abolished in many of the countries that retain it. + +Retribution + +Supporters of the death penalty argued that death penalty is morally justified when applied in murder especially with aggravating elements such as for murder of police officers, child murder, torture murder, multiple homicide and mass killing such as terrorism, massacre and genocide. This argument is strongly defended by New York Law School's Professor Robert Blecker, who says that the punishment must be painful in proportion to the crime. Eighteenth-century philosopher Immanuel Kant defended a more extreme position, according to which every murderer deserves to die on the grounds that loss of life is incomparable to any penalty that allows them to remain alive, including life imprisonment. + +Some abolitionists argue that retribution is simply revenge and cannot be condoned. Others while accepting retribution as an element of criminal justice nonetheless argue that life without parole is a sufficient substitute. It is also argued that the punishing of a killing with another death is a relatively unusual punishment for a violent act, because in general violent crimes are not punished by subjecting the perpetrator to a similar act (e.g. rapists are, typically, not punished by corporal punishment, although it may be inflicted in Singapore, for example). + +Human rights +Abolitionists believe capital punishment is the worst violation of human rights, because the right to life is the most important, and capital punishment violates it without necessity and inflicts to the condemned a psychological torture. Human rights activists oppose the death penalty, calling it "cruel, inhuman and degrading punishment". Amnesty International considers it to be "the ultimate irreversible denial of Human Rights". Albert Camus wrote in a 1956 book called Reflections on the Guillotine, Resistance, Rebellion & Death: + +In the classic doctrine of natural rights as expounded by for instance Locke and Blackstone, on the other hand, it is an important idea that the right to life can be forfeited, as most other rights can be given due process is observed, such as the right to property and the right to freedom, including provisionally, in anticipation of an actual verdict. As John Stuart Mill explained in a speech given in Parliament against an amendment to abolish capital punishment for murder in 1868: + +In one of the most recent cases relating to the death penalty in Singapore, activists like Jolovan Wham, Kirsten Han and Kokila Annamalai and even the international groups like the United Nations and European Union argued for Malaysian drug trafficker Nagaenthran K. Dharmalingam, who has been on death row at Singapore's Changi Prison since 2010, should not be executed due to an alleged intellectual disability, as they argued that Nagaenthran has low IQ of 69 and a psychiatrist has assessed him to be mentally impaired to an extent that he should not be held liable to his crime and execution. They also cited international law where a country should be prohibiting the execution of mentally and intellectually impaired people in order to push for Singapore to commute Nagaenthran's death penalty to life imprisonment based on protection of human rights. However, the Singapore government and both Singapore's High Court and Court of Appeal maintained their firm stance that despite his certified low IQ, it is confirmed that Nagaenthran is not mentally or intellectually disabled based on the joint opinion of three government psychiatrists as he is able to fully understand the magnitude of his actions and has no problem in his daily functioning of life. Despite the international outcry, Nagaenthran was executed on 27 April 2022. + +Non-painful execution + +Trends in most of the world have long been to move to private and less painful executions. France developed the guillotine for this reason in the final years of the 18th century, while Britain banned hanging, drawing, and quartering in the early 19th century. Hanging by turning the victim off a ladder or by kicking a stool or a bucket, which causes death by strangulation, was replaced by long drop "hanging" where the subject is dropped a longer distance to dislocate the neck and sever the spinal cord. Mozaffar ad-Din Shah Qajar, Shah of Persia (1896–1907) introduced throat-cutting and blowing from a gun (close-range cannon fire) as quick and relatively painless alternatives to more torturous methods of executions used at that time. In the United States, electrocution and gas inhalation were introduced as more humane alternatives to hanging, but have been almost entirely superseded by lethal injection. A small number of countries, for example Iran and Saudi Arabia, still employ slow hanging methods, decapitation, and stoning. + +A study of executions carried out in the United States between 1977 and 2001 indicated that at least 34 of the 749 executions, or 4.5%, involved "unanticipated problems or delays that caused, at least arguably, unnecessary agony for the prisoner or that reflect gross incompetence of the executioner". The rate of these "botched executions" remained steady over the period of the study. A separate study published in The Lancet in 2005 found that in 43% of cases of lethal injection, the blood level of hypnotics was insufficient to guarantee unconsciousness. However, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 2008 (Baze v. Rees) and again in 2015 (Glossip v. Gross) that lethal injection does not constitute cruel and unusual punishment. In Bucklew v. Precythe, the majority verdict – written by Judge Neil Gorsuch – further affirmed this principle, stating that while the ban on cruel and unusual punishment affirmatively bans penalties that deliberately inflict pain and degradation, it does in no sense limit the possible infliction of pain in the execution of a capital verdict. + +Wrongful execution + +It is frequently argued that capital punishment leads to miscarriage of justice through the wrongful execution of innocent persons. Many people have been proclaimed innocent victims of the death penalty. + +Some have claimed that as many as 39 executions have been carried out in the face of compelling evidence of innocence or serious doubt about guilt in the US from 1992 through 2004. Newly available DNA evidence prevented the pending execution of more than 15 death row inmates during the same period in the US, but DNA evidence is only available in a fraction of capital cases. , 159 prisoners on death row have been exonerated by DNA or other evidence, which is seen as an indication that innocent prisoners have almost certainly been executed. The National Coalition to +Abolish the Death Penalty claims that between 1976 and 2015, 1,414 prisoners in the United States have been executed while 156 sentenced to death have had their death sentences vacated. It is impossible to assess how many have been wrongly executed, since courts do not generally investigate the innocence of a dead defendant, and defense attorneys tend to concentrate their efforts on clients whose lives can still be saved; however, there is strong evidence of innocence in many cases. + +Improper procedure may also result in unfair executions. For example, Amnesty International argues that in Singapore "the Misuse of Drugs Act contains a series of presumptions which shift the burden of proof from the prosecution to the accused. This conflicts with the universally guaranteed right to be presumed innocent until proven guilty". Singapore's Misuse of Drugs Act presumes one is guilty of possession of drugs if, as examples, one is found to be present or escaping from a location "proved or presumed to be used for the purpose of smoking or administering a controlled drug", if one is in possession of a key to a premises where drugs are present, if one is in the company of another person found to be in possession of illegal drugs, or if one tests positive after being given a mandatory urine drug screening. Urine drug screenings can be given at the discretion of police, without requiring a search warrant. The onus is on the accused in all of the above situations to prove that they were not in possession of or consumed illegal drugs. + +Volunteers + +Some prisoners have volunteered or attempted to expedite capital punishment, often by waiving all appeals. Prisoners have made requests or committed further crimes in prison as well. In the United States, execution volunteers constitute approximately 11% of prisoners on death row. Volunteers often bypass legal procedures which are designed to designate the death penalty for the "worst of the worst" offenders. Opponents of execution volunteering cited the prevalence of mental illness among volunteers comparing it to suicide. Execution volunteers have received considerably less attention and effort at legal reform than those who were exonerated after execution. + +Racial, ethnic and social class bias +Opponents of the death penalty argue that this punishment is being used more often against perpetrators from racial and ethnic minorities and from lower socioeconomic backgrounds, than against those criminals who come from a privileged background; and that the background of the victim also influences the outcome. Researchers have shown that white Americans are more likely to support the death penalty when told that it is mostly applied to black Americans, and that more stereotypically black-looking or dark-skinned defendants are more likely to be sentenced to death if the case involves a white victim. However, a study published in 2018 failed to replicate the findings of earlier studies that had concluded that white Americans are more likely to support the death penalty if informed that it is largely applied to black Americans; according to the authors, their findings "may result from changes since 2001 in the effects of racial stimuli on white attitudes about the death penalty or their willingness to express those attitudes in a survey context." + +In Alabama in 2019, a death row inmate named Domineque Ray was denied his imam in the room during his execution, instead only offered a Christian chaplain. After filing a complaint, a federal court of appeals ruled 5–4 against Ray's request. The majority cited the "last-minute" nature of the request, and the dissent stated that the treatment went against the core principle of denominational neutrality. + +In July 2019, two Shiite men, Ali Hakim al-Arab, 25, and Ahmad al-Malali, 24, were executed in Bahrain, despite the protests from the United Nations and rights group. Amnesty International stated that the executions were being carried out on confessions of "terrorism crimes" that were obtained through torture. + +On 30 March 2022, despite the appeals by the United Nations and rights activists, 68-year-old Malay Singaporean Abdul Kahar Othman was hanged at Singapore's Changi Prison for illegally trafficking diamorphine, which marked the first execution in Singapore since 2019 as a result of an informal moratorium caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. Earlier, there were appeals made to advocate for Abdul Kahar's death penalty be commuted to life imprisonment on humanitarian grounds, as Abdul Kahar came from a poor family and has struggled with drug addiction. He was also revealed to have been spending most of his life going in and out of prison, including a ten-year sentence of preventive detention from 1995 to 2005, and has not been given much time for rehabilitation, which made the activists and groups arguing that Abdul Kahar should be given a chance for rehabilitation instead of subjecting him to execution. Both the European Union (EU) and Amnesty International criticised Singapore for finalizing and carrying out Abdul Kahar's execution, and about 400 Singaporeans protested against the government's use of the death penalty merely days after Abdul Kahar's death sentence was authorised. Still, over 80% of the public supported the use of the death penalty in Singapore. + +International views + + +The United Nations introduced a resolution during the General Assembly's 62nd sessions in 2007 calling for a universal ban. The approval of a draft resolution by the Assembly's third committee, which deals with human rights issues, voted 99 to 52, with 33 abstentions, in support of the resolution on 15 November 2007 and was put to a vote in the Assembly on 18 December. + +Again in 2008, a large majority of states from all regions adopted, on 20 November in the UN General Assembly (Third Committee), a second resolution calling for a moratorium on the use of the death penalty; 105 countries voted in support of the draft resolution, 48 voted against and 31 abstained. + +The moratorium resolution has been presented for a vote each year since 2007. On December 15, 2022, 125 countries voted in support of the moratorium, with 37 countries opposing, and 22 abstentions. The countries voting against the moratorium included the United States, People's Republic of China, North Korea, and Iran. + +A range of amendments proposed by a small minority of pro-death penalty countries were overwhelmingly defeated. It had in 2007 passed a non-binding resolution (by 104 to 54, with 29 abstentions) by asking its member states for "a moratorium on executions with a view to abolishing the death penalty". + +A number of regional conventions prohibit the death penalty, most notably, the Protocol 6 (abolition in time of peace) and Protocol 13 (abolition in all circumstances) to the European Convention on Human Rights. The same is also stated under Protocol 2 in the American Convention on Human Rights, which, however, has not been ratified by all countries in the Americas, most notably Canada and the United States. Most relevant operative international treaties do not require its prohibition for cases of serious crime, most notably, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. This instead has, in common with several other treaties, an optional protocol prohibiting capital punishment and promoting its wider abolition. + +Several international organizations have made abolition of the death penalty (during time of peace, or in all circumstances) a requirement of membership, most notably the EU and the Council of Europe. The Council of Europe are willing to accept a moratorium as an interim measure. Thus, while Russia was a member of the Council of Europe, and the death penalty remains codified in its law, it has not made use of it since becoming a member of the council – Russia has not executed anyone since 1996. With the exception of Russia (abolitionist in practice) and Belarus (retentionist), all European countries are classified as abolitionist. + +Latvia abolished the death penalty for war crimes in 2012, becoming the last EU member to do so. + +Protocol 13 to the European Convention on Human Rights calls for the abolition of the death penalty in all circumstances (including for war crimes). The majority of European countries have signed and ratified it. Some European countries have not done this, but all of them except Belarus have now abolished the death penalty in all circumstances (, and Russia ). Poland is the most recent country to ratify the protocol, on 28 August 2013. + +Protocol 6, which prohibits the death penalty during peacetime, has been ratified by all members of the Council of Europe. It had been signed but not ratified by Russia at the time of its expulsion in 2022. + +There are also other international abolitionist instruments, such as the Second Optional Protocol to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, which has 90 parties; and the Protocol to the American Convention on Human Rights to Abolish the Death Penalty (for the Americas; ratified by 13 states). + +In Turkey, over 500 people were sentenced to death after the 1980 Turkish coup d'état. About 50 of them were executed, the last one 25 October 1984. Then there was a de facto moratorium on the death penalty in Turkey. As a move towards EU membership, Turkey made some legal changes. The death penalty was removed from peacetime law by the National Assembly in August 2002, and in May 2004 Turkey amended its constitution to remove capital punishment in all circumstances. It ratified Protocol 13 to the European Convention on Human Rights in February 2006. As a result, Europe is a continent free of the death penalty in practice, all states, having ratified Protocol 6 to the European Convention on Human Rights, with the exceptions of Russia (which has entered a moratorium) and Belarus, which are not members of the Council of Europe. The Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe has been lobbying for Council of Europe observer states who practice the death penalty, the U.S. and Japan, to abolish it or lose their observer status. In addition to banning capital punishment for EU member states, the EU has also banned detainee transfers in cases where the receiving party may seek the death penalty. + +Sub-Saharan African countries that have recently abolished the death penalty include Burundi, which abolished the death penalty for all crimes in 2009, and Gabon which did the same in 2010. On 5 July 2012, Benin became part of the Second Optional Protocol to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), which prohibits the use of the death penalty. + +The newly created South Sudan is among the 111 UN member states that supported the resolution passed by the United Nations General Assembly that called for the removal of the death penalty, therefore affirming its opposition to the practice. South Sudan, however, has not yet abolished the death penalty and stated that it must first amend its Constitution, and until that happens it will continue to use the death penalty. + +Among non-governmental organizations (NGOs), Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch are noted for their opposition to capital punishment. A number of such NGOs, as well as trade unions, local councils, and bar associations, formed a World Coalition Against the Death Penalty in 2002. + +An open letter led by Danish Member of the European Parliament, Karen Melchior was sent to the European Commission ahead of the 26 January 2021 meeting of the Bahraini Minister of Foreign Affairs, Abdullatif bin Rashid Al Zayani with the members of the European Union for the signing of a Cooperation Agreement. A total of 16 MEPs undersigned the letter expressing their grave concern towards the extended abuse of human rights in Bahrain following the arbitrary arrest and detention of activists and critics of the government. The attendees of the meeting were requested to demand from their Bahraini counterparts to take into consideration the concerns raised by the MEPs, particularly for the release of Abdulhadi Al-Khawaja and Sheikh Mohammed Habib Al-Muqdad, the two European-Bahraini dual citizens on death row. + +Religious views + +The world's major faiths have differing views depending on the religion, denomination, sect and the individual adherent. The Catholic Church considers the death penalty as "inadmissible" in any circumstance and denounces it as an "attack" on the "inviolability and dignity of the person." Both the Baháʼí and Islamic faiths support capital punishment. + +See also + Capital punishment for homosexuality + Death in custody + Execution chamber + Executioner + Judicial dissolution, sometimes referred to as the "corporate death penalty" + The Death Penalty: Opposing Viewpoints (book) + Shame culture + Last meal + Capital punishment in Judaism + +Notes and references + +Notes + +Explanatory notes + +References + +Bibliography + + + Marian J. Borg and Michael L. Radelet. (2004). On botched executions. In: Peter Hodgkinson and William A. Schabas (eds.) Capital Punishment. pp. 143–68. [Online]. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Available from: Cambridge Books Online . + Gail A. Van Norman. (2010). Physician participation in executions. In: Gail A. Van Norman et al. (eds.) Clinical Ethics in Anesthesiology. pp. 285–91. [Online]. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Available from: Cambridge Books Online . + +Further reading + + + Curry, Tim. "Cutting the Hangman's Noose: African Initiatives to Abolish the Death Penalty ." () American University Washington College of Law. + Davis, David Brion. "The movement to abolish capital punishment in America, 1787–1861." American Historical Review 63.1 (1957): 23–46. online + + Hammel, A. Ending the Death Penalty: The European Experience in Global Perspective (2014). + + + + + + O'Brien, Doireann. "Investigating the Origin of Europe and America's Diverging Positions on the Issue of Capital Punishment." Social and Political Review (2018): 98+. online + Rakoff, Jed S., "The Last of His Kind" (review of John Paul Stevens, The Making of a Justice: Reflections on My First 94 Years, Little, Brown, 549 pp.), The New York Review of Books, vol. LXVI, no. 14 (26 September 2019), pp. 20, 22, 24. John Paul Stevens, "a throwback to the postwar liberal Republican [U.S. Supreme Court] appointees", questioned the validity of "the doctrine of sovereign immunity, which holds that you cannot sue any state or federal government agency, or any of its officers or employees, for any wrong they may have committed against you, unless the state or federal government consents to being sued" (p. 20); the propriety of "the increasing resistance of the U.S. Supreme Court to most meaningful forms of gun control" (p. 22); and "the constitutionality of the death penalty... because of incontrovertible evidence that innocent people have been sentenced to death." (pp. 22, 24.) + Sarat, Austin and Juergen Martschukat, eds. Is the Death Penalty Dying?: European and American Perspectives (2011) + for middle school students + + + Steiker, Carol S. "Capital punishment and American exceptionalism." Oregon Law Review. 81 (2002): 97+ online + +External links + + About.com's Pros & Cons of the Death Penalty and Capital Punishment + Capital Punishment article in the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy. + 1000+ Death Penalty links all in one place + Updates on the death penalty generally and capital punishment law specifically + Texas Department of Criminal Justice: list of executed offenders and their last statements + Death Penalty Worldwide: Academic research database on the laws, practice, and statistics of capital punishment for every death penalty country in the world. + Answers.com entry on capital punishment + "How to Kill a Human Being", BBC Horizon TV programme documentary, 2008 + U.S. and 50 State death penalty/capital punishment law and other relevant links Megalaw + Two audio documentaries covering execution in the United States: Witness to an Execution The Execution Tapes + +Supporting + + Studies showing the death penalty saves lives + Criminal Justice Legal Foundation + Keep life without parole and death penalty intact + Why the death penalty is needed + Pro Death Penalty.com + Pro Death Penalty Resource Page + 119 Pro DP Links + The Death Penalty is Constitutional + The Paradoxes of a Death Penalty Stance by Charles Lane in The Washington Post + Clark County, Indiana, Prosecutor's Page on capital punishment + In Favor of Capital Punishment – Famous Quotes supporting Capital Punishment + Studies spur new death penalty debate + +Opposing + + World Coalition Against the Death Penalty + Death Watch International International anti-death penalty campaign group + Campaign to End the Death Penalty + Anti-Death Penalty Information: includes a monthly watchlist of upcoming executions and death penalty statistics for the United States. + The Death Penalty Information Center: Statistical information and studies + Amnesty International – Abolish the death penalty Campaign: Human Rights organisation + European Union: Information on anti-death penalty policies + IPS Inter Press Service International news on capital punishment + Death Penalty Focus: American group dedicated to abolishing the death penalty + Reprieve.org: United States-based volunteer program for foreign lawyers, students, and others to work at death penalty defense offices + American Civil Liberties Union: Demanding a Moratorium on the Death Penalty + National Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty + NSW Council for Civil Liberties : an Australian organisation opposed to the Death Penalty in the Asian region + Winning a war on terror: eliminating the death penalty + Electric Chair at Sing Sing, a 1900 photograph by William M. Vander Weyde, accompanied by a poem by Jared Carter. + Lead prosecutor apologizes for role in sending man to death row Shreveport Times, 2015 + +Religious views + + Message supporting the moratorium on the death penalty The Dalai Lama + Buddhism & Capital Punishment from The Engaged Zen Society + Orthodox Union website: Rabbi Yosef Edelstein: Parshat Beha'alotcha: A Few Reflections on Capital Punishment + Lists several Catholic links Priests for Life + The Death Penalty: Why the Church Speaks a Countercultural Message by Kenneth R. Overberg, S.J., from AmericanCatholic.org + Wrestling with the Death Penalty by Andy Prince, from Youth Update on AmericanCatholic.org + + Catholics Against Capital Punishment: offers a Catholic perspective and provides resources and links + Kashif Shahzada 2010: Why The Death Penalty Is un-Islamic? + + +Ethically disputed judicial practices +Penology +Social policy +Killings by type +A cultural movement is a change in the way a number of different disciplines approach their work. This embodies all art forms, the sciences, and philosophies. Historically, different nations or regions of the world have gone through their own independent sequence of movements in culture, but as world communications have accelerated this geographical distinction has become less distinct. When cultural movements go through revolutions from one to the next, genres tend to get attacked and mixed up, and often new genres are generated and old ones fade.: These changes are often reactions against the prior cultural form, which typically has grown stale and repetitive. An obsession emerges among the mainstream with the new movement, and the old one falls into neglect – sometimes it dies out entirely, but often it chugs along favored in a few disciplines and occasionally making reappearances (sometimes prefixed with "neo-"). + +There is continual argument over the precise definition of each of these periods, and one historian might group them differently, or choose different names or descriptions. As well, even though in many cases the popular change from one to the next can be swift and sudden, the beginning and end of movements are somewhat subjective, as the movements did not spring fresh into existence out of the blue and did not come to an abrupt end and lose total support, as would be suggested by a date range. Thus use of the term "period" is somewhat deceptive. "Period" also suggests a linearity of development, whereas it has not been uncommon for two or more distinctive cultural approaches to be active at the same time. Historians will be able to find distinctive traces of a cultural movement before its accepted beginning, and there will always be new creations in old forms. So it can be more useful to think in terms of broad "movements" that have rough beginnings and endings. Yet for historical perspective, some rough date ranges will be provided for each to indicate the "height" or accepted time span of the movement. + +This current article covers western, notably European and American cultural movements. They have, however, been paralleled by cultural movements in the Orient and elsewhere. In the late 20th and early 21st century in Thailand, for example, there has been a cultural shift away from western social and political values more toward Japanese and Chinese. As well, That culture has reinvigorated monarchical concepts to accommodate state shifts away from western ideology regarding democracy and monarchies. + +Cultural movements + Graeco-Roman + The Greek culture marked a departure from the other Mediterranean cultures that preceded and surrounded it. The Romans adopted Greek and other styles, and spread the result throughout Europe and the Middle East. Together, Greek and Roman thought in philosophy, religion, science, history, and all forms of thought can be viewed as a central underpinning of Western culture, and is therefore termed the "Classical period" by some. Others might divide it into the Hellenistic period and the Roman period, or might choose other finer divisions. + See: Classical architecture — Classical sculpture — Greek architecture — Hellenistic architecture — Ionic — Doric — Corinthian — Stoicism — Cynicism — Epicurean — Roman architecture — Early Christian — Neoplatonism + Romanesque (11th century & 12th centuries) + A style (esp. architectural) similar in form and materials to Roman styles. Romanesque seems to be the first pan-European style since Roman Imperial Architecture and examples are found in every part of the continent. + See: Romanesque architecture — Ottonian Art + Gothic (mid 12th century until mid 15th century) + + See: Gothic architecture — Gregorian chant — Neoplatonism + Nominalism + + Rejects Platonic realism as a requirement for thinking and speaking in general terms. + Humanism (16th century) + + Renaissance + The use of light, shadow, and perspective to more accurately represent life. Because of how fundamentally these ideas were felt to alter so much of life, some have referred to it as the "Golden Age". In reality it was less an "Age" and more of a movement in popular philosophy, science, and thought that spread over Europe (and probably other parts of the world), over time, and affected different aspects of culture at different points in time. Very roughly, the following periods can be taken as indicative of place/time foci of the Renaissance: Italian Renaissance 1450–1550. Spanish Renaissance 1550–1587. English Renaissance 1588–1629. + Protestant Reformation + The Protestant Reformation, often referred to simply as the Reformation, was a schism from the Roman Catholic Church initiated by Martin Luther, John Calvin, Huldrych Zwingli and other early Protestant Reformers in the 16th century Europe. + Mannerism + Anti-classicist movement that sought to emphasize the feeling of the artist himself. + See: Mannerism/Art + Baroque + Emphasizes power and authority, characterized by intricate detail and without the "disturbing angst" of Mannerism. Essentially is exaggerated Classicism to promote and glorify the Church and State. Occupied with notions of infinity. + See: Baroque art — Baroque music + Rococo + Neoclassical (17th–19th centuries) + Severe, unemotional movement recalling Roman and Greek ("classical") style, reacting against the overbred Rococo style and the emotional Baroque style. It stimulated revival of classical thinking, and had especially profound effects on science and politics. Also had a direct influence on Academic Art in the 19th century. Beginning in the early 17th century with Cartesian thought (see René Descartes), this movement provided philosophical frameworks for the natural sciences, sought to determine the principles of knowledge by rejecting all things previously believed to be known about the world. In Renaissance Classicism attempts are made to recreate the classic art forms — tragedy, comedy, and farce. + See also: Weimar Classicism +Age of Enlightenment (1688–1789): Reason (rationalism) seen as the ideal. + Romanticism (1770–1830) + Began in Germany and spread to England and France as a reaction against Neoclassicism and against the Age of Enlightenment.. The notion of "folk genius", or an inborn and intuitive ability to do magnificent things, is a core principle of the Romantic movement. Nostalgia for the primitive past in preference to the scientifically minded present. Romantic heroes, exemplified by Napoleon, are popular. Fascination with the past leads to a resurrection of interest in the Gothic period. It did not really replace the Neoclassical movement so much as provide a counterbalance; many artists sought to join both styles in their works. + See: Symbolism + Realism (1830–1905) + Ushered in by the Industrial Revolution and growing Nationalism in the world. Began in France. Attempts to portray the speech and mannerisms of everyday people in everyday life. Tends to focus on middle class social and domestic problems. Plays by Ibsen are an example. Naturalism evolved from Realism, following it briefly in art and more enduringly in theatre, film, and literature. Impressionism, based on 'scientific' knowledge and discoveries concerns observing nature and reality objectively. + See: Post-impressionism — Neo-impressionism — Pointillism — Pre-Raphaelite + Art Nouveau (1880–1905) + Decorative, symbolic art + See: Transcendentalism + Modernism (1880–1965) + Also known as the Avant-garde movement. Originating in the 19th century with Symbolism, the Modernist movement composed itself of a wide range of 'isms' that ran in contrast to Realism and that sought out the underlying fundamentals of art and philosophy. The Jazz age and Hollywood emerge and have their hey-days. + See: Fauvism — Cubism — Futurism — Suprematism — Dada — Constructivism — Surrealism — Expressionism — Existentialism — Op art — Art Deco — Bauhaus — Neo-Plasticism — Precisionism — Abstract expressionism — New Realism — Color field painting — Happening — Fluxus — Hard-edge painting — Pop art — Photorealism — Minimalism — Postminimalism — Lyrical abstraction — Situationism + Postmodernism (since c.1965) + A reaction to Modernism, in a way, Postmodernism largely discards the notion that artists should seek pure fundamentals, often questioning whether such fundamentals even exist – or suggestion that if they do exist, they may be irrelevant. It is exemplified by movements such as deconstructivism, conceptual art, etc. + See: Postmodern philosophy — Postmodern music — Postmodern art + Post-postmodernism (since c.1990) + +See also + Art movement + List of art movements + Critical theory + Cultural imperialism + Cultural sensibility + History of philosophy + Postliterate society + Periodization + Social movement + +External links + Alphabetical list of some movements, styles, discoveries and facts on the World History Timeline chart + +Culture +Social movements +The chalcogens (ore forming) ( ) are the chemical elements in group 16 of the periodic table. This group is also known as the oxygen family. Group 16 consists of the elements oxygen (O), sulfur (S), selenium (Se), tellurium (Te), and the radioactive elements polonium (Po) and livermorium (Lv). Often, oxygen is treated separately from the other chalcogens, sometimes even excluded from the scope of the term "chalcogen" altogether, due to its very different chemical behavior from sulfur, selenium, tellurium, and polonium. The word "chalcogen" is derived from a combination of the Greek word () principally meaning copper (the term was also used for bronze/brass, any metal in the poetic sense, ore or coin), and the Latinized Greek word , meaning born or produced. + +Sulfur has been known since antiquity, and oxygen was recognized as an element in the 18th century. Selenium, tellurium and polonium were discovered in the 19th century, and livermorium in 2000. All of the chalcogens have six valence electrons, leaving them two electrons short of a full outer shell. Their most common oxidation states are −2, +2, +4, and +6. They have relatively low atomic radii, especially the lighter ones. + +Lighter chalcogens are typically nontoxic in their elemental form, and are often critical to life, while the heavier chalcogens are typically toxic. All of the naturally occurring chalcogens have some role in biological functions, either as a nutrient or a toxin. Selenium is an important nutrient (among others as a building block of selenocysteine) but is also commonly toxic. Tellurium often has unpleasant effects (although some organisms can use it), and polonium (especially the isotope polonium-210) is always harmful as a result of its radioactivity. + +Sulfur has more than 20 allotropes, oxygen has nine, selenium has at least eight, polonium has two, and only one crystal structure of tellurium has so far been discovered. There are numerous organic chalcogen compounds. Not counting oxygen, organic sulfur compounds are generally the most common, followed by organic selenium compounds and organic tellurium compounds. This trend also occurs with chalcogen pnictides and compounds containing chalcogens and carbon group elements. + +Oxygen is generally obtained by separation of air into nitrogen and oxygen. Sulfur is extracted from oil and natural gas. Selenium and tellurium are produced as byproducts of copper refining. Polonium is most available in naturally occurring actinide-containing materials. Livermorium has been synthesized in particle accelerators. The primary use of elemental oxygen is in steelmaking. Sulfur is mostly converted into sulfuric acid, which is heavily used in the chemical industry. Selenium's most common application is glassmaking. Tellurium compounds are mostly used in optical disks, electronic devices, and solar cells. Some of polonium's applications are due to its radioactivity. + +Properties + +Atomic and physical +Chalcogens show similar patterns in electron configuration, especially in the outermost shells, where they all have the same number of valence electrons, resulting in similar trends in chemical behavior: + +All chalcogens have six valence electrons. All of the solid, stable chalcogens are soft and do not conduct heat well. Electronegativity decreases towards the chalcogens with higher atomic numbers. Density, melting and boiling points, and atomic and ionic radii tend to increase towards the chalcogens with higher atomic numbers. + +Isotopes +Out of the six known chalcogens, one (oxygen) has an atomic number equal to a nuclear magic number, which means that their atomic nuclei tend to have increased stability towards radioactive decay. Oxygen has three stable isotopes, and 14 unstable ones. Sulfur has four stable isotopes, 20 radioactive ones, and one isomer. Selenium has six observationally stable or nearly stable isotopes, 26 radioactive isotopes, and 9 isomers. Tellurium has eight stable or nearly stable isotopes, 31 unstable ones, and 17 isomers. Polonium has 42 isotopes, none of which are stable. It has an additional 28 isomers. In addition to the stable isotopes, some radioactive chalcogen isotopes occur in nature, either because they are decay products, such as 210Po, because they are primordial, such as 82Se, because of cosmic ray spallation, or via nuclear fission of uranium. Livermorium isotopes 290Lv through 293Lv have been discovered; the most stable livermorium isotope is 293Lv, which has a half-life of 0.061 seconds. + +Among the lighter chalcogens (oxygen and sulfur), the most neutron-poor isotopes undergo proton emission, the moderately neutron-poor isotopes undergo electron capture or β+ decay, the moderately neutron-rich isotopes undergo β− decay, and the most neutron rich isotopes undergo neutron emission. The middle chalcogens (selenium and tellurium) have similar decay tendencies as the lighter chalcogens, but no proton-emitting isotopes have been observed, and some of the most neutron-deficient isotopes of tellurium undergo alpha decay. Polonium isotopes tend to decay via alpha or beta decay. Isotopes with nonzero nuclear spins are more abundant in nature among the chalcogens selenium and tellurium than they are with sulfur. + +Allotropes + +Oxygen's most common allotrope is diatomic oxygen, or O2, a reactive paramagnetic molecule that is ubiquitous to aerobic organisms and has a blue color in its liquid state. Another allotrope is O3, or ozone, which is three oxygen atoms bonded together in a bent formation. There is also an allotrope called tetraoxygen, or O4, and six allotropes of solid oxygen including "red oxygen", which has the formula O8. + +Sulfur has over 20 known allotropes, which is more than any other element except carbon. The most common allotropes are in the form of eight-atom rings, but other molecular allotropes that contain as few as two atoms or as many as 20 are known. Other notable sulfur allotropes include rhombic sulfur and monoclinic sulfur. Rhombic sulfur is the more stable of the two allotropes. Monoclinic sulfur takes the form of long needles and is formed when liquid sulfur is cooled to slightly below its melting point. The atoms in liquid sulfur are generally in the form of long chains, but above 190 °C, the chains begin to break down. If liquid sulfur above 190 °C is frozen very rapidly, the resulting sulfur is amorphous or "plastic" sulfur. Gaseous sulfur is a mixture of diatomic sulfur (S2) and 8-atom rings. + +Selenium has at least eight distinct allotropes. The gray allotrope, commonly referred to as the "metallic" allotrope, despite not being a metal, is stable and has a hexagonal crystal structure. The gray allotrope of selenium is soft, with a Mohs hardness of 2, and brittle. Four other allotropes of selenium are metastable. These include two monoclinic red allotropes and two amorphous allotropes, one of which is red and one of which is black. The red allotrope converts to the black allotrope in the presence of heat. The gray allotrope of selenium is made from spirals on selenium atoms, while one of the red allotropes is made of stacks of selenium rings (Se8). + +Tellurium is not known to have any allotropes, although its typical form is hexagonal. Polonium has two allotropes, which are known as α-polonium and β-polonium. α-polonium has a cubic crystal structure and converts to the rhombohedral β-polonium at 36 °C. + +The chalcogens have varying crystal structures. Oxygen's crystal structure is monoclinic, sulfur's is orthorhombic, selenium and tellurium have the hexagonal crystal structure, while polonium has a cubic crystal structure. + +Chemical + +Oxygen, sulfur, and selenium are nonmetals, and tellurium is a metalloid, meaning that its chemical properties are between those of a metal and those of a nonmetal. It is not certain whether polonium is a metal or a metalloid. Some sources refer to polonium as a metalloid, although it has some metallic properties. Also, some allotropes of selenium display characteristics of a metalloid, even though selenium is usually considered a nonmetal. Even though oxygen is a chalcogen, its chemical properties are different from those of other chalcogens. One reason for this is that the heavier chalcogens have vacant d-orbitals. Oxygen's electronegativity is also much higher than those of the other chalcogens. This makes oxygen's electric polarizability several times lower than those of the other chalcogens. + +For covalent bonding a chalcogen may accept two electrons according to the octet rule, leaving two lone pairs. When an atom forms two single bonds, they form an angle between 90° and 120°. In 1+ cations, such as , a chalcogen forms three molecular orbitals arranged in a trigonal pyramidal fashion and one lone pair. Double bonds are also common in chalcogen compounds, for example in chalcogenates (see below). + +The oxidation number of the most common chalcogen compounds with positive metals is −2. However the tendency for chalcogens to form compounds in the −2 state decreases towards the heavier chalcogens. Other oxidation numbers, such as −1 in pyrite and peroxide, do occur. The highest formal oxidation number is +6. This oxidation number is found in sulfates, selenates, tellurates, polonates, and their corresponding acids, such as sulfuric acid. + +Oxygen is the most electronegative element except for fluorine, and forms compounds with almost all of the chemical elements, including some of the noble gases. It commonly bonds with many metals and metalloids to form oxides, including iron oxide, titanium oxide, and silicon oxide. Oxygen's most common oxidation state is −2, and the oxidation state −1 is also relatively common. With hydrogen it forms water and hydrogen peroxide. Organic oxygen compounds are ubiquitous in organic chemistry. + +Sulfur's oxidation states are −2, +2, +4, and +6. Sulfur-containing analogs of oxygen compounds often have the prefix thio-. Sulfur's chemistry is similar to oxygen's, in many ways. One difference is that sulfur-sulfur double bonds are far weaker than oxygen-oxygen double bonds, but sulfur-sulfur single bonds are stronger than oxygen-oxygen single bonds. Organic sulfur compounds such as thiols have a strong specific smell, and a few are utilized by some organisms. + +Selenium's oxidation states are −2, +4, and +6. Selenium, like most chalcogens, bonds with oxygen. There are some organic selenium compounds, such as selenoproteins. Tellurium's oxidation states are −2, +2, +4, and +6. Tellurium forms the oxides tellurium monoxide, tellurium dioxide, and tellurium trioxide. Polonium's oxidation states are +2 and +4. + +There are many acids containing chalcogens, including sulfuric acid, sulfurous acid, selenic acid, and telluric acid. All hydrogen chalcogenides are toxic except for water. Oxygen ions often come in the forms of oxide ions (), peroxide ions (), and hydroxide ions (). Sulfur ions generally come in the form of sulfides (), bisulfides (), sulfites (), sulfates (), and thiosulfates (). Selenium ions usually come in the form of selenides (), selenites () and selenates (). Tellurium ions often come in the form of tellurates (). Molecules containing metal bonded to chalcogens are common as minerals. For example, pyrite (FeS2) is an iron ore, and the rare mineral calaverite is the ditelluride . + +Although all group 16 elements of the periodic table, including oxygen, can be defined as chalcogens, oxygen and oxides are usually distinguished from chalcogens and chalcogenides. The term chalcogenide is more commonly reserved for sulfides, selenides, and tellurides, rather than for oxides. + +Except for polonium, the chalcogens are all fairly similar to each other chemically. They all form X2− ions when reacting with electropositive metals. + +Sulfide minerals and analogous compounds produce gases upon reaction with oxygen. + +Compounds + +With halogens +Chalcogens also form compounds with halogens known as chalcohalides, or chalcogen halides. The majority of simple chalcogen halides are well-known and widely used as chemical reagents. However, more complicated chalcogen halides, such as sulfenyl, sulfonyl, and sulfuryl halides, are less well known to science. Out of the compounds consisting purely of chalcogens and halogens, there are a total of 13 chalcogen fluorides, nine chalcogen chlorides, eight chalcogen bromides, and six chalcogen iodides that are known. The heavier chalcogen halides often have significant molecular interactions. Sulfur fluorides with low valences are fairly unstable and little is known about their properties. However, sulfur fluorides with high valences, such as sulfur hexafluoride, are stable and well-known. Sulfur tetrafluoride is also a well-known sulfur fluoride. Certain selenium fluorides, such as selenium difluoride, have been produced in small amounts. The crystal structures of both selenium tetrafluoride and tellurium tetrafluoride are known. Chalcogen chlorides and bromides have also been explored. In particular, selenium dichloride and sulfur dichloride can react to form organic selenium compounds. Dichalcogen dihalides, such as Se2Cl2 also are known to exist. There are also mixed chalcogen-halogen compounds. These include SeSX, with X being chlorine or bromine. Such compounds can form in mixtures of sulfur dichloride and selenium halides. These compounds have been fairly recently structurally characterized, as of 2008. In general, diselenium and disulfur chlorides and bromides are useful chemical reagents. Chalcogen halides with attached metal atoms are soluble in organic solutions. One example of such a compound is . Unlike selenium chlorides and bromides, selenium iodides have not been isolated, as of 2008, although it is likely that they occur in solution. Diselenium diiodide, however, does occur in equilibrium with selenium atoms and iodine molecules. Some tellurium halides with low valences, such as and , form polymers when in the solid state. These tellurium halides can be synthesized by the reduction of pure tellurium with superhydride and reacting the resulting product with tellurium tetrahalides. Ditellurium dihalides tend to get less stable as the halides become lower in atomic number and atomic mass. Tellurium also forms iodides with even fewer iodine atoms than diiodides. These include TeI and Te2I. These compounds have extended structures in the solid state. Halogens and chalcogens can also form halochalcogenate anions. + +Organic +Alcohols, phenols and other similar compounds contain oxygen. However, in thiols, selenols and tellurols; sulfur, selenium, and tellurium replace oxygen. Thiols are better known than selenols or tellurols. Aside from alcohols, thiols are the most stable chalcogenols and tellurols are the least stable, being unstable in heat or light. Other organic chalcogen compounds include thioethers, selenoethers and telluroethers. Some of these, such as dimethyl sulfide, diethyl sulfide, and dipropyl sulfide are commercially available. Selenoethers are in the form of R2Se or RSeR. Telluroethers such as dimethyl telluride are typically prepared in the same way as thioethers and selenoethers. Organic chalcogen compounds, especially organic sulfur compounds, have the tendency to smell unpleasant. Dimethyl telluride also smells unpleasant, and selenophenol is renowned for its "metaphysical stench". There are also thioketones, selenoketones, and telluroketones. Out of these, thioketones are the most well-studied with 80% of chalcogenoketones papers being about them. Selenoketones make up 16% of such papers and telluroketones make up 4% of them. Thioketones have well-studied non-linear electric and photophysical properties. Selenoketones are less stable than thioketones and telluroketones are less stable than selenoketones. Telluroketones have the highest level of polarity of chalcogenoketones. + +With metals + +There is a very large number of metal chalcogenides. There are also ternary compounds containing alkali metals and transition metals. Highly metal-rich metal chalcogenides, such as Lu7Te and Lu8Te have domains of the metal's crystal lattice containing chalcogen atoms. While these compounds do exist, analogous chemicals that contain lanthanum, praseodymium, gadolinium, holmium, terbium, or ytterbium have not been discovered, as of 2008. The boron group metals aluminum, gallium, and indium also form bonds to chalcogens. The Ti3+ ion forms chalcogenide dimers such as TiTl5Se8. Metal chalcogenide dimers also occur as lower tellurides, such as Zr5Te6. + +Elemental chalcogens react with certain lanthanide compounds to form lanthanide clusters rich in chalcogens. Uranium(IV) chalcogenol compounds also exist. There are also transition metal chalcogenols which have potential to serve as catalysts and stabilize nanoparticles. + +With pnictogens + +Compounds with chalcogen-phosphorus bonds have been explored for more than 200 years. These compounds include unsophisticated phosphorus chalcogenides as well as large molecules with biological roles and phosphorus-chalcogen compounds with metal clusters. These compounds have numerous applications, including organo-phosphate insecticides, strike-anywhere matches and quantum dots. A total of 130,000 compounds with at least one phosphorus-sulfur bond, 6000 compounds with at least one phosphorus-selenium bond, and 350 compounds with at least one phosphorus-tellurium bond have been discovered. The decrease in the number of chalcogen-phosphorus compounds further down the periodic table is due to diminishing bond strength. Such compounds tend to have at least one phosphorus atom in the center, surrounded by four chalcogens and side chains. However, some phosphorus-chalcogen compounds also contain hydrogen (such as secondary phosphine chalcogenides) or nitrogen (such as dichalcogenoimidodiphosphates). Phosphorus selenides are typically harder to handle that phosphorus sulfides, and compounds in the form PxTey have not been discovered. Chalcogens also bond with other pnictogens, such as arsenic, antimony, and bismuth. Heavier chalcogen pnictides tend to form ribbon-like polymers instead of individual molecules. Chemical formulas of these compounds include Bi2S3 and Sb2Se3. Ternary chalcogen pnictides are also known. Examples of these include P4O6Se and P3SbS3. salts containing chalcogens and pnictogens also exist. Almost all chalcogen pnictide salts are typically in the form of [PnxE4x]3−, where Pn is a pnictogen and E is a chalcogen. Tertiary phosphines can react with chalcogens to form compounds in the form of R3PE, where E is a chalcogen. When E is sulfur, these compounds are relatively stable, but they are less so when E is selenium or tellurium. Similarly, secondary phosphines can react with chalcogens to form secondary phosphine chalcogenides. However, these compounds are in a state of equilibrium with chalcogenophosphinous acid. Secondary phosphine chalcogenides are weak acids. Binary compounds consisting of antimony or arsenic and a chalcogen. These compounds tend to be colorful and can be created by a reaction of the constituent elements at temperatures of . + +Other +Chalcogens form single bonds and double bonds with other carbon group elements than carbon, such as silicon, germanium, and tin. Such compounds typically form from a reaction of carbon group halides and chalcogenol salts or chalcogenol bases. Cyclic compounds with chalcogens, carbon group elements, and boron atoms exist, and occur from the reaction of boron dichalcogenates and carbon group metal halides. Compounds in the form of M-E, where M is silicon, germanium, or tin, and E is sulfur, selenium or tellurium have been discovered. These form when carbon group hydrides react or when heavier versions of carbenes react. Sulfur and tellurium can bond with organic compounds containing both silicon and phosphorus. + +All of the chalcogens form hydrides. In some cases this occurs with chalcogens bonding with two hydrogen atoms. However tellurium hydride and polonium hydride are both volatile and highly labile. Also, oxygen can bond to hydrogen in a 1:1 ratio as in hydrogen peroxide, but this compound is unstable. + +Chalcogen compounds form a number of interchalcogens. For instance, sulfur forms the toxic sulfur dioxide and sulfur trioxide. Tellurium also forms oxides. There are some chalcogen sulfides as well. These include selenium sulfide, an ingredient in some shampoos. + +Since 1990, a number of borides with chalcogens bonded to them have been detected. The chalcogens in these compounds are mostly sulfur, although some do contain selenium instead. One such chalcogen boride consists of two molecules of dimethyl sulfide attached to a boron-hydrogen molecule. Other important boron-chalcogen compounds include macropolyhedral systems. Such compounds tend to feature sulfur as the chalcogen. There are also chalcogen borides with two, three, or four chalcogens. Many of these contain sulfur but some, such as Na2B2Se7 contain selenium instead. + +History + +Early discoveries + +Sulfur has been known since ancient times and is mentioned in the Bible fifteen times. It was known to the ancient Greeks and commonly mined by the ancient Romans. It was also historically used as a component of Greek fire. In the Middle Ages, it was a key part of alchemical experiments. In the 1700s and 1800s, scientists Joseph Louis Gay-Lussac and Louis-Jacques Thénard proved sulfur to be a chemical element. + +Early attempts to separate oxygen from air were hampered by the fact that air was thought of as a single element up to the 17th and 18th centuries. Robert Hooke, Mikhail Lomonosov, Ole Borch, and Pierre Bayden all successfully created oxygen, but did not realize it at the time. Oxygen was discovered by Joseph Priestley in 1774 when he focused sunlight on a sample of mercuric oxide and collected the resulting gas. Carl Wilhelm Scheele had also created oxygen in 1771 by the same method, but Scheele did not publish his results until 1777. + +Tellurium was first discovered in 1783 by Franz Joseph Müller von Reichenstein. He discovered tellurium in a sample of what is now known as calaverite. Müller assumed at first that the sample was pure antimony, but tests he ran on the sample did not agree with this. Muller then guessed that the sample was bismuth sulfide, but tests confirmed that the sample was not that. For some years, Muller pondered the problem. Eventually he realized that the sample was gold bonded with an unknown element. In 1796, Müller sent part of the sample to the German chemist Martin Klaproth, who purified the undiscovered element. Klaproth decided to call the element tellurium after the Latin word for earth. + +Selenium was discovered in 1817 by Jöns Jacob Berzelius. Berzelius noticed a reddish-brown sediment at a sulfuric acid manufacturing plant. The sample was thought to contain arsenic. Berzelius initially thought that the sediment contained tellurium, but came to realize that it also contained a new element, which he named selenium after the Greek moon goddess Selene. + +Periodic table placing + +Three of the chalcogens (sulfur, selenium, and tellurium) were part of the discovery of periodicity, as they are among a series of triads of elements in the same group that were noted by Johann Wolfgang Döbereiner as having similar properties. Around 1865 John Newlands produced a series of papers where he listed the elements in order of increasing atomic weight and similar physical and chemical properties that recurred at intervals of eight; he likened such periodicity to the octaves of music. His version included a "group b" consisting of oxygen, sulfur, selenium, tellurium, and osmium. + +After 1869, Dmitri Mendeleev proposed his periodic table placing oxygen at the top of "group VI" above sulfur, selenium, and tellurium. Chromium, molybdenum, tungsten, and uranium were sometimes included in this group, but they would be later rearranged as part of group VIB; uranium would later be moved to the actinide series. Oxygen, along with sulfur, selenium, tellurium, and later polonium would be grouped in group VIA, until the group's name was changed to group 16 in 1988. + +Modern discoveries +In the late 19th century, Marie Curie and Pierre Curie discovered that a sample of pitchblende was emitting four times as much radioactivity as could be explained by the presence of uranium alone. The Curies gathered several tons of pitchblende and refined it for several months until they had a pure sample of polonium. The discovery officially took place in 1898. Prior to the invention of particle accelerators, the only way to produce polonium was to extract it over several months from uranium ore. + +The first attempt at creating livermorium was from 1976 to 1977 at the LBNL, who bombarded curium-248 with calcium-48, but were not successful. After several failed attempts in 1977, 1998, and 1999 by research groups in Russia, Germany, and the US, livermorium was created successfully in 2000 at the Joint Institute for Nuclear Research by bombarding curium-248 atoms with calcium-48 atoms. The element was known as ununhexium until it was officially named livermorium in 2012. + +Names and etymology +In the 19th century, Jons Jacob Berzelius suggested calling the elements in group 16 "amphigens", as the elements in the group formed amphid salts (salts of oxyacids. Formerly regarded as composed of two oxides, an acid and a basic oxide) The term received some use in the early 1800s but is now obsolete. The name chalcogen comes from the Greek words (, literally "copper"), and (, born, gender, kindle). It was first used in 1932 by Wilhelm Biltz's group at Leibniz University Hannover, where it was proposed by Werner Fischer. The word "chalcogen" gained popularity in Germany during the 1930s because the term was analogous to "halogen". Although the literal meanings of the modern Greek words imply that chalcogen means "copper-former", this is misleading because the chalcogens have nothing to do with copper in particular. "Ore-former" has been suggested as a better translation, as the vast majority of metal ores are chalcogenides and the word in ancient Greek was associated with metals and metal-bearing rock in general; copper, and its alloy bronze, was one of the first metals to be used by humans. + +Oxygen's name comes from the Greek words oxy genes, meaning "acid-forming". Sulfur's name comes from either the Latin word or the Sanskrit word ; both of those terms are ancient words for sulfur. Selenium is named after the Greek goddess of the moon, Selene, to match the previously-discovered element tellurium, whose name comes from the Latin word , meaning earth. Polonium is named after Marie Curie's country of birth, Poland. Livermorium is named for the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. + +Occurrence +The four lightest chalcogens (oxygen, sulfur, selenium, and tellurium) are all primordial elements on Earth. Sulfur and oxygen occur as constituent copper ores and selenium and tellurium occur in small traces in such ores. Polonium forms naturally from the decay of other elements, even though it is not primordial. Livermorium does not occur naturally at all. + +Oxygen makes up 21% of the atmosphere by weight, 89% of water by weight, 46% of the Earth's crust by weight, and 65% of the human body. Oxygen also occurs in many minerals, being found in all oxide minerals and hydroxide minerals, and in numerous other mineral groups. Stars of at least eight times the mass of the Sun also produce oxygen in their cores via nuclear fusion. Oxygen is the third-most abundant element in the universe, making up 1% of the universe by weight. + +Sulfur makes up 0.035% of the Earth's crust by weight, making it the 17th most abundant element there and makes up 0.25% of the human body. It is a major component of soil. Sulfur makes up 870 parts per million of seawater and about 1 part per billion of the atmosphere. Sulfur can be found in elemental form or in the form of sulfide minerals, sulfate minerals, or sulfosalt minerals. Stars of at least 12 times the mass of the Sun produce sulfur in their cores via nuclear fusion. Sulfur is the tenth most abundant element in the universe, making up 500 parts per million of the universe by weight. + +Selenium makes up 0.05 parts per million of the Earth's crust by weight. This makes it the 67th most abundant element in the Earth's crust. Selenium makes up on average 5 parts per million of the soils. Seawater contains around 200 parts per trillion of selenium. The atmosphere contains 1 nanogram of selenium per cubic meter. There are mineral groups known as selenates and selenites, but there are not many minerals in these groups. Selenium is not produced directly by nuclear fusion. Selenium makes up 30 parts per billion of the universe by weight. + +There are only 5 parts per billion of tellurium in the Earth's crust and 15 parts per billion of tellurium in seawater. Tellurium is one of the eight or nine least abundant elements in the Earth's crust. There are a few dozen tellurate minerals and telluride minerals, and tellurium occurs in some minerals with gold, such as sylvanite and calaverite. Tellurium makes up 9 parts per billion of the universe by weight. + +Polonium only occurs in trace amounts on Earth, via radioactive decay of uranium and thorium. It is present in uranium ores in concentrations of 100 micrograms per metric ton. Very minute amounts of polonium exist in the soil and thus in most food, and thus in the human body. The Earth's crust contains less than 1 part per billion of polonium, making it one of the ten rarest metals on Earth. + +Livermorium is always produced artificially in particle accelerators. Even when it is produced, only a small number of atoms are synthesized at a time. + +Chalcophile elements + +Chalcophile elements are those that remain on or close to the surface because they combine readily with chalcogens other than oxygen, forming compounds which do not sink into the core. Chalcophile ("chalcogen-loving") elements in this context are those metals and heavier nonmetals that have a low affinity for oxygen and prefer to bond with the heavier chalcogen sulfur as sulfides. Because sulfide minerals are much denser than the silicate minerals formed by lithophile elements, chalcophile elements separated below the lithophiles at the time of the first crystallisation of the Earth's crust. This has led to their depletion in the Earth's crust relative to their solar abundances, though this depletion has not reached the levels found with siderophile elements. + +Production + +Approximately 100 million metric tons of oxygen are produced yearly. Oxygen is most commonly produced by fractional distillation, in which air is cooled to a liquid, then warmed, allowing all the components of air except for oxygen to turn to gases and escape. Fractionally distilling air several times can produce 99.5% pure oxygen. Another method with which oxygen is produced is to send a stream of dry, clean air through a bed of molecular sieves made of zeolite, which absorbs the nitrogen in the air, leaving 90 to 93% pure oxygen. + +Sulfur can be mined in its elemental form, although this method is no longer as popular as it used to be. In 1865 a large deposit of elemental sulfur was discovered in the U.S. states of Louisiana and Texas, but it was difficult to extract at the time. In the 1890s, Herman Frasch came up with the solution of liquefying the sulfur with superheated steam and pumping the sulfur up to the surface. These days sulfur is instead more often extracted from oil, natural gas, and tar. + +The world production of selenium is around 1500 metric tons per year, out of which roughly 10% is recycled. Japan is the largest producer, producing 800 metric tons of selenium per year. Other large producers include Belgium (300 metric tons per year), the United States (over 200 metric tons per year), Sweden (130 metric tons per year), and Russia (100 metric tons per year). Selenium can be extracted from the waste from the process of electrolytically refining copper. Another method of producing selenium is to farm selenium-gathering plants such as milk vetch. This method could produce three kilograms of selenium per acre, but is not commonly practiced. + +Tellurium is mostly produced as a by-product of the processing of copper. Tellurium can also be refined by electrolytic reduction of sodium telluride. The world production of tellurium is between 150 and 200 metric tons per year. The United States is one of the largest producers of tellurium, producing around 50 metric tons per year. Peru, Japan, and Canada are also large producers of tellurium. + +Until the creation of nuclear reactors, all polonium had to be extracted from uranium ore. In modern times, most isotopes of polonium are produced by bombarding bismuth with neutrons. Polonium can also be produced by high neutron fluxes in nuclear reactors. Approximately 100 grams of polonium are produced yearly. All the polonium produced for commercial purposes is made in the Ozersk nuclear reactor in Russia. From there, it is taken to Samara, Russia for purification, and from there to St. Petersburg for distribution. The United States is the largest consumer of polonium. + +All livermorium is produced artificially in particle accelerators. The first successful production of livermorium was achieved by bombarding curium-248 atoms with calcium-48 atoms. As of 2011, roughly 25 atoms of livermorium had been synthesized. + +Applications + +Metabolism is the most important source and use of oxygen. Minor industrial uses include Steelmaking (55% of all purified oxygen produced), the chemical industry (25% of all purified oxygen), medical use, water treatment (as oxygen kills some types of bacteria), rocket fuel (in liquid form), and metal cutting. + +Most sulfur produced is transformed into sulfur dioxide, which is further transformed into sulfuric acid, a very common industrial chemical. Other common uses include being a key ingredient of gunpowder and Greek fire, and being used to change soil pH. Sulfur is also mixed into rubber to vulcanize it. Sulfur is used in some types of concrete and fireworks. 60% of all sulfuric acid produced is used to generate phosphoric acid. Sulfur is used as a pesticide (specifically as an acaricide and fungicide) on "orchard, ornamental, vegetable, grain, and other crops." + +Around 40% of all selenium produced goes to glassmaking. 30% of all selenium produced goes to metallurgy, including manganese production. 15% of all selenium produced goes to agriculture. Electronics such as photovoltaic materials claim 10% of all selenium produced. Pigments account for 5% of all selenium produced. Historically, machines such as photocopiers and light meters used one-third of all selenium produced, but this application is in steady decline. + +Tellurium suboxide, a mixture of tellurium and tellurium dioxide, is used in the rewritable data layer of some CD-RW disks and DVD-RW disks. Bismuth telluride is also used in many microelectronic devices, such as photoreceptors. Tellurium is sometimes used as an alternative to sulfur in vulcanized rubber. Cadmium telluride is used as a high-efficiency material in solar panels. + +Some of polonium's applications relate to the element's radioactivity. For instance, polonium is used as an alpha-particle generator for research. Polonium alloyed with beryllium provides an efficient neutron source. Polonium is also used in nuclear batteries. Most polonium is used in antistatic devices. Livermorium does not have any uses whatsoever due to its extreme rarity and short half-life. + +Organochalcogen compounds are involved in the semiconductor process. These compounds also feature into ligand chemistry and biochemistry. One application of chalcogens themselves is to manipulate redox couples in supramolecular chemistry (chemistry involving non-covalent bond interactions). This application leads on to such applications as crystal packing, assembly of large molecules, and biological recognition of patterns. The secondary bonding interactions of the larger chalcogens, selenium and tellurium, can create organic solvent-holding acetylene nanotubes. Chalcogen interactions are useful for conformational analysis and stereoelectronic effects, among other things. Chalcogenides with through bonds also have applications. For instance, divalent sulfur can stabilize carbanions, cationic centers, and radical. Chalcogens can confer upon ligands (such as DCTO) properties such as being able to transform Cu(II) to Cu(I). Studying chalcogen interactions gives access to radical cations, which are used in mainstream synthetic chemistry. Metallic redox centers of biological importance are tunable by interactions of ligands containing chalcogens, such as methionine and selenocysteine. Also, chalcogen through-bonds can provide insight about the process of electron transfer. + +Biological role + +Oxygen is needed by almost all organisms for the purpose of generating ATP. It is also a key component of most other biological compounds, such as water, amino acids and DNA. Human blood contains a large amount of oxygen. Human bones contain 28% oxygen. Human tissue contains 16% oxygen. A typical 70-kilogram human contains 43 kilograms of oxygen, mostly in the form of water. + +All animals need significant amounts of sulfur. Some amino acids, such as cysteine and methionine contain sulfur. Plant roots take up sulfate ions from the soil and reduce it to sulfide ions. Metalloproteins also use sulfur to attach to useful metal atoms in the body and sulfur similarly attaches itself to poisonous metal atoms like cadmium to haul them to the safety of the liver. On average, humans consume 900 milligrams of sulfur each day. Sulfur compounds, such as those found in skunk spray often have strong odors. + +All animals and some plants need trace amounts of selenium, but only for some specialized enzymes. Humans consume on average between 6 and 200 micrograms of selenium per day. Mushrooms and brazil nuts are especially noted for their high selenium content. Selenium in foods is most commonly found in the form of amino acids such as selenocysteine and selenomethionine. Selenium can protect against heavy metal poisoning. + +Tellurium is not known to be needed for animal life, although a few fungi can incorporate it in compounds in place of selenium. Microorganisms also absorb tellurium and emit dimethyl telluride. Most tellurium in the blood stream is excreted slowly in urine, but some is converted to dimethyl telluride and released through the lungs. On average, humans ingest about 600 micrograms of tellurium daily. Plants can take up some tellurium from the soil. Onions and garlic have been found to contain as much as 300 parts per million of tellurium in dry weight. + +Polonium has no biological role, and is highly toxic on account of being radioactive. + +Toxicity + +Oxygen is generally nontoxic, but oxygen toxicity has been reported when it is used in high concentrations. In both elemental gaseous form and as a component of water, it is vital to almost all life on Earth. Despite this, liquid oxygen is highly dangerous. Even gaseous oxygen is dangerous in excess. For instance, sports divers have occasionally drowned from convulsions caused by breathing pure oxygen at a depth of more than underwater. Oxygen is also toxic to some bacteria. Ozone, an allotrope of oxygen, is toxic to most life. It can cause lesions in the respiratory tract. + +Sulfur is generally nontoxic and is even a vital nutrient for humans. However, in its elemental form it can cause redness in the eyes and skin, a burning sensation and a cough if inhaled, a burning sensation and diarrhoea and/or catharsis if ingested, and can irritate the mucous membranes. An excess of sulfur can be toxic for cows because microbes in the rumens of cows produce toxic hydrogen sulfide upon reaction with sulfur. Many sulfur compounds, such as hydrogen sulfide (H2S) and sulfur dioxide (SO2) are highly toxic. + +Selenium is a trace nutrient required by humans on the order of tens or hundreds of micrograms per day. A dose of over 450 micrograms can be toxic, resulting in bad breath and body odor. Extended, low-level exposure, which can occur at some industries, results in weight loss, anemia, and dermatitis. In many cases of selenium poisoning, selenous acid is formed in the body. Hydrogen selenide (H2Se) is highly toxic. + +Exposure to tellurium can produce unpleasant side effects. As little as 10 micrograms of tellurium per cubic meter of air can cause notoriously unpleasant breath, described as smelling like rotten garlic. Acute tellurium poisoning can cause vomiting, gut inflammation, internal bleeding, and respiratory failure. Extended, low-level exposure to tellurium causes tiredness and indigestion. Sodium tellurite (Na2TeO3) is lethal in amounts of around 2 grams. + +Polonium is dangerous as an alpha particle emitter. If ingested, polonium-210 is a million times as toxic as hydrogen cyanide by weight; it has been used as a murder weapon in the past, most famously to kill Alexander Litvinenko. Polonium poisoning can cause nausea, vomiting, anorexia, and lymphopenia. It can also damage hair follicles and white blood cells. Polonium-210 is only dangerous if ingested or inhaled because its alpha particle emissions cannot penetrate human skin. Polonium-209 is also toxic, and can cause leukemia. + +Amphid salts +Amphid salts was a name given by Jons Jacob Berzelius in the 19th century for chemical salts derived from the 16th group of the periodic table which included oxygen, sulfur, selenium, and tellurium. The term received some use in the early 1800s but is now obsolete. The current term in use for the 16th group is chalcogens. + +See also + Chalcogenide + Gold chalcogenides + Halogen + Interchalcogen + Pnictogen + +References + +External links + + +Periodic table +Groups (periodic table) +Carbon dioxide is a chemical compound with the chemical formula . It is made up of molecules that each have one carbon atom covalently double bonded to two oxygen atoms. It is found in the gas state at room temperature, and as the source of available carbon in the carbon cycle, atmospheric is the primary carbon source for life on Earth. In the air, carbon dioxide is transparent to visible light but absorbs infrared radiation, acting as a greenhouse gas. Carbon dioxide is soluble in water and is found in groundwater, lakes, ice caps, and seawater. When carbon dioxide dissolves in water, it forms carbonate and mainly bicarbonate (), which causes ocean acidification as atmospheric levels increase. + +It is a trace gas in Earth's atmosphere at 421 parts per million (ppm), or about 0.04% (as of May 2022) having risen from pre-industrial levels of 280 ppm or about 0.025%. Burning fossil fuels is the primary cause of these increased concentrations and also the primary cause of climate change. + +Its concentration in Earth's pre-industrial atmosphere since late in the Precambrian was regulated by organisms and geological phenomena. Plants, algae and cyanobacteria use energy from sunlight to synthesize carbohydrates from carbon dioxide and water in a process called photosynthesis, which produces oxygen as a waste product. In turn, oxygen is consumed and is released as waste by all aerobic organisms when they metabolize organic compounds to produce energy by respiration. is released from organic materials when they decay or combust, such as in forest fires. Since plants require for photosynthesis, and humans and animals depend on plants for food, is necessary for the survival of life on earth. + +Carbon dioxide is 53% more dense than dry air, but is long lived and thoroughly mixes in the atmosphere. About half of excess emissions to the atmosphere are absorbed by land and ocean carbon sinks. These sinks can become saturated and are volatile, as decay and wildfires result in the being released back into the atmosphere. is eventually sequestered (stored for the long term) in rocks and organic deposits like coal, petroleum and natural gas. Sequestered is released into the atmosphere through burning fossil fuels or naturally by volcanoes, hot springs, geysers, and when carbonate rocks dissolve in water or react with acids. + + is a versatile industrial material, used, for example, as an inert gas in welding and fire extinguishers, as a pressurizing gas in air guns and oil recovery, and as a supercritical fluid solvent in decaffeination of coffee and supercritical drying. It is a byproduct of fermentation of sugars in bread, beer and wine making, and is added to carbonated beverages like seltzer and beer for effervescence. It has a sharp and acidic odor and generates the taste of soda water in the mouth, but at normally encountered concentrations it is odorless. + +Chemical and physical properties + +Structure, bonding and molecular vibrations + +The symmetry of a carbon dioxide molecule is linear and centrosymmetric at its equilibrium geometry. The length of the carbon-oxygen bond in carbon dioxide is 116.3 pm, noticeably shorter than the roughly 140-pm length of a typical single C–O bond, and shorter than most other C–O multiply bonded functional groups such as carbonyls. Since it is centrosymmetric, the molecule has no electric dipole moment. + +As a linear triatomic molecule, has four vibrational modes as shown in the diagram. In the symmetric and the antisymmetric stretching modes, the atoms move along the axis of the molecule. There are two bending modes, which are degenerate, meaning that they have the same frequency and same energy, because of the symmetry of the molecule. When a molecule touches a surface or touches another molecule, the two bending modes can differ in frequency because the interaction is different for the two modes. Some of the vibrational modes are observed in the infrared (IR) spectrum: the antisymmetric stretching mode at wavenumber 2349 cm−1 (wavelength 4.25 μm) and the degenerate pair of bending modes at 667 cm−1 (wavelength 15 μm). The symmetric stretching mode does not create an electric dipole so is not observed in IR spectroscopy, but it is detected in by Raman spectroscopy at 1388 cm−1 (wavelength 7.2 μm). + +In the gas phase, carbon dioxide molecules undergo significant vibrational motions and do not keep a fixed structure. However, in a Coulomb explosion imaging experiment, an instantaneous image of the molecular structure can be deduced. Such an experiment has been performed for carbon dioxide. +The result of this experiment, and the conclusion of theoretical calculations based on an ab initio potential energy surface of the molecule, is that none of the +molecules in the gas phase are ever exactly linear. This counter-intuitive result is trivially due to +the fact that the nuclear motion volume element vanishes for linear geometries. +This is so for all molecules (except diatomics!). + +In aqueous solution + +Carbon dioxide is soluble in water, in which it reversibly forms (carbonic acid), which is a weak acid since its ionization in water is incomplete. + +The hydration equilibrium constant of carbonic acid is, at 25 °C: + +Hence, the majority of the carbon dioxide is not converted into carbonic acid, but remains as molecules, not affecting the pH. + +The relative concentrations of , , and the deprotonated forms (bicarbonate) and (carbonate) depend on the pH. As shown in a Bjerrum plot, in neutral or slightly alkaline water (pH > 6.5), the bicarbonate form predominates (>50%) becoming the most prevalent (>95%) at the pH of seawater. In very alkaline water (pH > 10.4), the predominant (>50%) form is carbonate. The oceans, being mildly alkaline with typical pH = 8.2–8.5, contain about 120 mg of bicarbonate per liter. + +Being diprotic, carbonic acid has two acid dissociation constants, the first one for the dissociation into the bicarbonate (also called hydrogen carbonate) ion (): + +Ka1 = 2.5 × 10−4 mol/L; pKa1 = 3.6 at 25 °C. +This is the true first acid dissociation constant, defined as + +where the denominator includes only covalently bound and does not include hydrated (aq). The much smaller and often-quoted value near 4.16 × 10−7 is an apparent value calculated on the (incorrect) assumption that all dissolved is present as carbonic acid, so that + +Since most of the dissolved remains as molecules, Ka1(apparent) has a much larger denominator and a much smaller value than the true Ka1. + +The bicarbonate ion is an amphoteric species that can act as an acid or as a base, depending on pH of the solution. At high pH, it dissociates significantly into the carbonate ion (): + +Ka2 = 4.69 × 10−11 mol/L; pKa2 = 10.329 + +In organisms, carbonic acid production is catalysed by the enzyme known as carbonic anhydrase. + +Chemical reactions of + is a potent electrophile having an electrophilic reactivity that is comparable to benzaldehyde or strong α,β-unsaturated carbonyl compounds. However, unlike electrophiles of similar reactivity, the reactions of nucleophiles with are thermodynamically less favored and are often found to be highly reversible. The reversible reaction of carbon dioxide with amines to make carbamates is used in scrubbers and has been suggested as a possible starting point for carbon capture and storage by amine gas treating. +Only very strong nucleophiles, like the carbanions provided by Grignard reagents and organolithium compounds react with to give carboxylates: + +where M = Li or Mg Br and R = alkyl or aryl. + +In metal carbon dioxide complexes, serves as a ligand, which can facilitate the conversion of to other chemicals. + +The reduction of to CO is ordinarily a difficult and slow reaction: + +Photoautotrophs (i.e. plants and cyanobacteria) use the energy contained in sunlight to photosynthesize simple sugars from absorbed from the air and water: + +The redox potential for this reaction near pH 7 is about −0.53 V versus the standard hydrogen electrode. The nickel-containing enzyme carbon monoxide dehydrogenase catalyses this process. + +Physical properties + +Carbon dioxide is colorless. At low concentrations, the gas is odorless; however, at sufficiently high concentrations, it has a sharp, acidic odor. At standard temperature and pressure, the density of carbon dioxide is around 1.98 kg/m3, about 1.53 times that of air. + +Carbon dioxide has no liquid state at pressures below 0.51795(10) MPa (5.11177(99) atm). At a pressure of 1 atm (0.101325 MPa), the gas deposits directly to a solid at temperatures below 194.6855(30) K (−78.4645(30) °C) and the solid sublimes directly to a gas above this temperature. In its solid state, carbon dioxide is commonly called dry ice. + +Liquid carbon dioxide forms only at pressures above 0.51795(10) MPa (5.11177(99) atm); the triple point of carbon dioxide is 216.592(3) K (−56.558(3) °C) at 0.51795(10) MPa (5.11177(99) atm) (see phase diagram). The critical point is 304.128(15) K (30.978(15) °C) at 7.3773(30) MPa (72.808(30) atm). Another form of solid carbon dioxide observed at high pressure is an amorphous glass-like solid. This form of glass, called carbonia, is produced by supercooling heated at extreme pressures (40–48 GPa, or about 400,000 atmospheres) in a diamond anvil. This discovery confirmed the theory that carbon dioxide could exist in a glass state similar to other members of its elemental family, like silicon dioxide (silica glass) and germanium dioxide. Unlike silica and germania glasses, however, carbonia glass is not stable at normal pressures and reverts to gas when pressure is released. + +At temperatures and pressures above the critical point, carbon dioxide behaves as a supercritical fluid known as supercritical carbon dioxide. + +Table of thermal and physical properties of saturated liquid carbon dioxide: + +Table of thermal and physical properties of carbon dioxide () at atmospheric pressure: + +Biological role +Carbon dioxide is an end product of cellular respiration in organisms that obtain energy by breaking down sugars, fats and amino acids with oxygen as part of their metabolism. This includes all plants, algae and animals and aerobic fungi and bacteria. In vertebrates, the carbon dioxide travels in the blood from the body's tissues to the skin (e.g., amphibians) or the gills (e.g., fish), from where it dissolves in the water, or to the lungs from where it is exhaled. During active photosynthesis, plants can absorb more carbon dioxide from the atmosphere than they release in respiration. + +Photosynthesis and carbon fixation + +Carbon fixation is a biochemical process by which atmospheric carbon dioxide is incorporated by plants, algae and (cyanobacteria) into energy-rich organic molecules such as glucose, thus creating their own food by photosynthesis. Photosynthesis uses carbon dioxide and water to produce sugars from which other organic compounds can be constructed, and oxygen is produced as a by-product. + +Ribulose-1,5-bisphosphate carboxylase oxygenase, commonly abbreviated to RuBisCO, is the enzyme involved in the first major step of carbon fixation, the production of two molecules of 3-phosphoglycerate from and ribulose bisphosphate, as shown in the diagram at left. + +RuBisCO is thought to be the single most abundant protein on Earth. + +Phototrophs use the products of their photosynthesis as internal food sources and as raw material for the biosynthesis of more complex organic molecules, such as polysaccharides, nucleic acids, and proteins. These are used for their own growth, and also as the basis of the food chains and webs that feed other organisms, including animals such as ourselves. Some important phototrophs, the coccolithophores synthesise hard calcium carbonate scales. A globally significant species of coccolithophore is Emiliania huxleyi whose calcite scales have formed the basis of many sedimentary rocks such as limestone, where what was previously atmospheric carbon can remain fixed for geological timescales. + +Plants can grow as much as 50% faster in concentrations of 1,000 ppm when compared with ambient conditions, though this assumes no change in climate and no limitation on other nutrients. Elevated levels cause increased growth reflected in the harvestable yield of crops, with wheat, rice and soybean all showing increases in yield of 12–14% under elevated in FACE experiments. + +Increased atmospheric concentrations result in fewer stomata developing on plants which leads to reduced water usage and increased water-use efficiency. Studies using FACE have shown that enrichment leads to decreased concentrations of micronutrients in crop plants. This may have knock-on effects on other parts of ecosystems as herbivores will need to eat more food to gain the same amount of protein. + +The concentration of secondary metabolites such as phenylpropanoids and flavonoids can also be altered in plants exposed to high concentrations of . + +Plants also emit during respiration, and so the majority of plants and algae, which use C3 photosynthesis, are only net absorbers during the day. Though a growing forest will absorb many tons of each year, a mature forest will produce as much from respiration and decomposition of dead specimens (e.g., fallen branches) as is used in photosynthesis in growing plants. Contrary to the long-standing view that they are carbon neutral, mature forests can continue to accumulate carbon and remain valuable carbon sinks, helping to maintain the carbon balance of Earth's atmosphere. Additionally, and crucially to life on earth, photosynthesis by phytoplankton consumes dissolved in the upper ocean and thereby promotes the absorption of from the atmosphere. + +Toxicity + +Carbon dioxide content in fresh air (averaged between sea-level and 10 kPa level, i.e., about altitude) varies between 0.036% (360 ppm) and 0.041% (412 ppm), depending on the location. + + is an asphyxiant gas and not classified as toxic or harmful in accordance with Globally Harmonized System of Classification and Labelling of Chemicals standards of United Nations Economic Commission for Europe by using the OECD Guidelines for the Testing of Chemicals. In concentrations up to 1% (10,000 ppm), it will make some people feel drowsy and give the lungs a stuffy feeling. Concentrations of 7% to 10% (70,000 to 100,000 ppm) may cause suffocation, even in the presence of sufficient oxygen, manifesting as dizziness, headache, visual and hearing dysfunction, and unconsciousness within a few minutes to an hour. The physiological effects of acute carbon dioxide exposure are grouped together under the term hypercapnia, a subset of asphyxiation. + +Because it is heavier than air, in locations where the gas seeps from the ground (due to sub-surface volcanic or geothermal activity) in relatively high concentrations, without the dispersing effects of wind, it can collect in sheltered/pocketed locations below average ground level, causing animals located therein to be suffocated. Carrion feeders attracted to the carcasses are then also killed. Children have been killed in the same way near the city of Goma by emissions from the nearby volcano Mount Nyiragongo. The Swahili term for this phenomenon is . + +Adaptation to increased concentrations of occurs in humans, including modified breathing and kidney bicarbonate production, in order to balance the effects of blood acidification (acidosis). Several studies suggested that 2.0 percent inspired concentrations could be used for closed air spaces (e.g. a submarine) since the adaptation is physiological and reversible, as deterioration in performance or in normal physical activity does not happen at this level of exposure for five days. Yet, other studies show a decrease in cognitive function even at much lower levels. Also, with ongoing respiratory acidosis, adaptation or compensatory mechanisms will be unable to reverse such condition. + +Below 1% +There are few studies of the health effects of long-term continuous exposure on humans and animals at levels below 1%. Occupational exposure limits have been set in the United States at 0.5% (5000 ppm) for an eight-hour period. At this concentration, International Space Station crew experienced headaches, lethargy, mental slowness, emotional irritation, and sleep disruption. Studies in animals at 0.5% have demonstrated kidney calcification and bone loss after eight weeks of exposure. A study of humans exposed in 2.5 hour sessions demonstrated significant negative effects on cognitive abilities at concentrations as low as 0.1% (1000ppm) likely due to induced increases in cerebral blood flow. Another study observed a decline in basic activity level and information usage at 1000 ppm, when compared to 500 ppm. However a review of the literature found that most studies on the phenomenon of carbon dioxide induced cognitive impairment to have a small effect on high-level decision making and most of the studies were confounded by inadequate study designs, environmental comfort, uncertainties in exposure doses and differing cognitive assessments used. Similarly a study on the effects of the concentration of in motorcycle helmets has been criticized for having dubious methodology in not noting the self-reports of motorcycle riders and taking measurements using mannequins. Further when normal motorcycle conditions were achieved (such as highway or city speeds) or the visor was raised the concentration of declined to safe levels (0.2%). + +Ventilation + +Poor ventilation is one of the main causes of excessive concentrations in closed spaces, leading to poor indoor air quality. Carbon dioxide differential above outdoor concentrations at steady state conditions (when the occupancy and ventilation system operation are sufficiently long that concentration has stabilized) are sometimes used to estimate ventilation rates per person. Higher concentrations are associated with occupant health, comfort and performance degradation. ASHRAE Standard 62.1–2007 ventilation rates may result in indoor concentrations up to 2,100 ppm above ambient outdoor conditions. Thus if the outdoor concentration is 400 ppm, indoor concentrations may reach 2,500 ppm with ventilation rates that meet this industry consensus standard. Concentrations in poorly ventilated spaces can be found even higher than this (range of 3,000 or 4,000 ppm). + +Miners, who are particularly vulnerable to gas exposure due to insufficient ventilation, referred to mixtures of carbon dioxide and nitrogen as "blackdamp", "choke damp" or "stythe". Before more effective technologies were developed, miners would frequently monitor for dangerous levels of blackdamp and other gases in mine shafts by bringing a caged canary with them as they worked. The canary is more sensitive to asphyxiant gases than humans, and as it became unconscious would stop singing and fall off its perch. The Davy lamp could also detect high levels of blackdamp (which sinks, and collects near the floor) by burning less brightly, while methane, another suffocating gas and explosion risk, would make the lamp burn more brightly. + +In February 2020, three people died from suffocation at a party in Moscow when dry ice (frozen ) was added to a swimming pool to cool it down. A similar accident occurred in 2018 when a woman died from fumes emanating from the large amount of dry ice she was transporting in her car. + +Indoor air +Humans spend more and more time in a confined atmosphere (around 80-90% of the time in a building or vehicle). According to the French Agency for Food, Environmental and Occupational Health & Safety (ANSES) and various actors in France, the rate in the indoor air of buildings (linked to human or animal occupancy and the presence of combustion installations), weighted by air renewal, is “usually between about 350 and 2,500 ppm”. + +In homes, schools, nurseries and offices, there are no systematic relationships between the levels of and other pollutants, and indoor is statistically not a good predictor of pollutants linked to outdoor road (or air, etc.) traffic. is the parameter that changes the fastest (with hygrometry and oxygen levels when humans or animals are gathered in a closed or poorly ventilated room). In poor countries, many open hearths are sources of and CO emitted directly into the living environment. + +Outdoor areas with elevated concentrations +Local concentrations of carbon dioxide can reach high values near strong sources, especially those that are isolated by surrounding terrain. At the Bossoleto hot spring near Rapolano Terme in Tuscany, Italy, situated in a bowl-shaped depression about in diameter, concentrations of rise to above 75% overnight, sufficient to kill insects and small animals. After sunrise the gas is dispersed by convection. High concentrations of produced by disturbance of deep lake water saturated with are thought to have caused 37 fatalities at Lake Monoun, Cameroon in 1984 and 1700 casualties at Lake Nyos, Cameroon in 1986. + +Human physiology + +Content + +The body produces approximately of carbon dioxide per day per person, containing of carbon. In humans, this carbon dioxide is carried through the venous system and is breathed out through the lungs, resulting in lower concentrations in the arteries. The carbon dioxide content of the blood is often given as the partial pressure, which is the pressure which carbon dioxide would have had if it alone occupied the volume. In humans, the blood carbon dioxide contents is shown in the adjacent table. + +Transport in the blood + is carried in blood in three different ways. (Exact percentages vary between arterial and venous blood). + Majority (about 70% to 80%) is converted to bicarbonate ions by the enzyme carbonic anhydrase in the red blood cells, by the reaction: + + 5–10% is dissolved in blood plasma + 5–10% is bound to hemoglobin as carbamino compounds + +Hemoglobin, the main oxygen-carrying molecule in red blood cells, carries both oxygen and carbon dioxide. However, the bound to hemoglobin does not bind to the same site as oxygen. Instead, it combines with the N-terminal groups on the four globin chains. However, because of allosteric effects on the hemoglobin molecule, the binding of decreases the amount of oxygen that is bound for a given partial pressure of oxygen. This is known as the Haldane Effect, and is important in the transport of carbon dioxide from the tissues to the lungs. Conversely, a rise in the partial pressure of or a lower pH will cause offloading of oxygen from hemoglobin, which is known as the Bohr effect. + +Regulation of respiration +Carbon dioxide is one of the mediators of local autoregulation of blood supply. If its concentration is high, the capillaries expand to allow a greater blood flow to that tissue. + +Bicarbonate ions are crucial for regulating blood pH. A person's breathing rate influences the level of in their blood. Breathing that is too slow or shallow causes respiratory acidosis, while breathing that is too rapid leads to hyperventilation, which can cause respiratory alkalosis. + +Although the body requires oxygen for metabolism, low oxygen levels normally do not stimulate breathing. Rather, breathing is stimulated by higher carbon dioxide levels. As a result, breathing low-pressure air or a gas mixture with no oxygen at all (such as pure nitrogen) can lead to loss of consciousness without ever experiencing air hunger. This is especially perilous for high-altitude fighter pilots. It is also why flight attendants instruct passengers, in case of loss of cabin pressure, to apply the oxygen mask to themselves first before helping others; otherwise, one risks losing consciousness. + +The respiratory centers try to maintain an arterial pressure of 40 mmHg. With intentional hyperventilation, the content of arterial blood may be lowered to 10–20 mmHg (the oxygen content of the blood is little affected), and the respiratory drive is diminished. This is why one can hold one's breath longer after hyperventilating than without hyperventilating. This carries the risk that unconsciousness may result before the need to breathe becomes overwhelming, which is why hyperventilation is particularly dangerous before free diving. + +Concentrations and role in the environment + +Atmosphere + +Oceans + +Ocean acidification + +Carbon dioxide dissolves in the ocean to form carbonic acid (), bicarbonate (), and carbonate (). There is about fifty times as much carbon dioxide dissolved in the oceans as exists in the atmosphere. The oceans act as an enormous carbon sink, and have taken up about a third of emitted by human activity. + +Hydrothermal vents +Carbon dioxide is also introduced into the oceans through hydrothermal vents. The Champagne hydrothermal vent, found at the Northwest Eifuku volcano in the Mariana Trench, produces almost pure liquid carbon dioxide, one of only two known sites in the world as of 2004, the other being in the Okinawa Trough. The finding of a submarine lake of liquid carbon dioxide in the Okinawa Trough was reported in 2006. + +Production + +Biological processes +Carbon dioxide is a by-product of the fermentation of sugar in the brewing of beer, whisky and other alcoholic beverages and in the production of bioethanol. Yeast metabolizes sugar to produce and ethanol, also known as alcohol, as follows: + +All aerobic organisms produce when they oxidize carbohydrates, fatty acids, and proteins. The large number of reactions involved are exceedingly complex and not described easily. Refer to (cellular respiration, anaerobic respiration and photosynthesis). The equation for the respiration of glucose and other monosaccharides is: + +Anaerobic organisms decompose organic material producing methane and carbon dioxide together with traces of other compounds. Regardless of the type of organic material, the production of gases follows well defined kinetic pattern. Carbon dioxide comprises about 40–45% of the gas that emanates from decomposition in landfills (termed "landfill gas"). Most of the remaining 50–55% is methane. + +Industrial processes +Carbon dioxide can be obtained by distillation from air, but the method is inefficient. Industrially, carbon dioxide is predominantly an unrecovered waste product, produced by several methods which may be practiced at various scales. + +Combustion +The combustion of all carbon-based fuels, such as methane (natural gas), petroleum distillates (gasoline, diesel, kerosene, propane), coal, wood and generic organic matter produces carbon dioxide and, except in the case of pure carbon, water. As an example, the chemical reaction between methane and oxygen: + +Iron is reduced from its oxides with coke in a blast furnace, producing pig iron and carbon dioxide: + +By-product from hydrogen production +Carbon dioxide is a byproduct of the industrial production of hydrogen by steam reforming and the water gas shift reaction in ammonia production. These processes begin with the reaction of water and natural gas (mainly methane). This is a major source of food-grade carbon dioxide for use in carbonation of beer and soft drinks, and is also used for stunning animals such as poultry. In the summer of 2018 a shortage of carbon dioxide for these purposes arose in Europe due to the temporary shut-down of several ammonia plants for maintenance. + +Thermal decomposition of limestone +It is produced by thermal decomposition of limestone, by heating (calcining) at about , in the manufacture of quicklime (calcium oxide, CaO), a compound that has many industrial uses: + +Acids liberate from most metal carbonates. Consequently, it may be obtained directly from natural carbon dioxide springs, where it is produced by the action of acidified water on limestone or dolomite. The reaction between hydrochloric acid and calcium carbonate (limestone or chalk) is shown below: + +The carbonic acid () then decomposes to water and : + +Such reactions are accompanied by foaming or bubbling, or both, as the gas is released. They have widespread uses in industry because they can be used to neutralize waste acid streams. + +Commercial uses +Carbon dioxide is used by the food industry, the oil industry, and the chemical industry. +The compound has varied commercial uses but one of its greatest uses as a chemical is in the production of carbonated beverages; it provides the sparkle in carbonated beverages such as soda water, beer and sparkling wine. + +Precursor to chemicals + +In the chemical industry, carbon dioxide is mainly consumed as an ingredient in the production of urea, with a smaller fraction being used to produce methanol and a range of other products. Some carboxylic acid derivatives such as sodium salicylate are prepared using by the Kolbe–Schmitt reaction. + +In addition to conventional processes using for chemical production, electrochemical methods are also being explored at a research level. In particular, the use of renewable energy for production of fuels from (such as methanol) is attractive as this could result in fuels that could be easily transported and used within conventional combustion technologies but have no net emissions. + +Agriculture +Plants require carbon dioxide to conduct photosynthesis. The atmospheres of greenhouses may (if of large size, must) be enriched with additional to sustain and increase the rate of plant growth. At very high concentrations (100 times atmospheric concentration, or greater), carbon dioxide can be toxic to animal life, so raising the concentration to 10,000 ppm (1%) or higher for several hours will eliminate pests such as whiteflies and spider mites in a greenhouse. + +Foods + +Carbon dioxide is a food additive used as a propellant and acidity regulator in the food industry. It is approved for usage in the EU (listed as E number E290), US and Australia and New Zealand (listed by its INS number 290). + +A candy called Pop Rocks is pressurized with carbon dioxide gas at about . When placed in the mouth, it dissolves (just like other hard candy) and releases the gas bubbles with an audible pop. + +Leavening agents cause dough to rise by producing carbon dioxide. Baker's yeast produces carbon dioxide by fermentation of sugars within the dough, while chemical leaveners such as baking powder and baking soda release carbon dioxide when heated or if exposed to acids. + +Beverages +Carbon dioxide is used to produce carbonated soft drinks and soda water. Traditionally, the carbonation of beer and sparkling wine came about through natural fermentation, but many manufacturers carbonate these drinks with carbon dioxide recovered from the fermentation process. In the case of bottled and kegged beer, the most common method used is carbonation with recycled carbon dioxide. With the exception of British real ale, draught beer is usually transferred from kegs in a cold room or cellar to dispensing taps on the bar using pressurized carbon dioxide, sometimes mixed with nitrogen. + +The taste of soda water (and related taste sensations in other carbonated beverages) is an effect of the dissolved carbon dioxide rather than the bursting bubbles of the gas. Carbonic anhydrase 4 converts to carbonic acid leading to a sour taste, and also the dissolved carbon dioxide induces a somatosensory response. + +Winemaking + +Carbon dioxide in the form of dry ice is often used during the cold soak phase in winemaking to cool clusters of grapes quickly after picking to help prevent spontaneous fermentation by wild yeast. The main advantage of using dry ice over water ice is that it cools the grapes without adding any additional water that might decrease the sugar concentration in the grape must, and thus the alcohol concentration in the finished wine. Carbon dioxide is also used to create a hypoxic environment for carbonic maceration, the process used to produce Beaujolais wine. + +Carbon dioxide is sometimes used to top up wine bottles or other storage vessels such as barrels to prevent oxidation, though it has the problem that it can dissolve into the wine, making a previously still wine slightly fizzy. For this reason, other gases such as nitrogen or argon are preferred for this process by professional wine makers. + +Stunning animals +Carbon dioxide is often used to "stun" animals before slaughter. "Stunning" may be a misnomer, as the animals are not knocked out immediately and may suffer distress. + +Inert gas +Carbon dioxide is one of the most commonly used compressed gases for pneumatic (pressurized gas) systems in portable pressure tools. Carbon dioxide is also used as an atmosphere for welding, although in the welding arc, it reacts to oxidize most metals. Use in the automotive industry is common despite significant evidence that welds made in carbon dioxide are more brittle than those made in more inert atmospheres. When used for MIG welding, use is sometimes referred to as MAG welding, for Metal Active Gas, as can react at these high temperatures. It tends to produce a hotter puddle than truly inert atmospheres, improving the flow characteristics. Although, this may be due to atmospheric reactions occurring at the puddle site. This is usually the opposite of the desired effect when welding, as it tends to embrittle the site, but may not be a problem for general mild steel welding, where ultimate ductility is not a major concern. + +Carbon dioxide is used in many consumer products that require pressurized gas because it is inexpensive and nonflammable, and because it undergoes a phase transition from gas to liquid at room temperature at an attainable pressure of approximately , allowing far more carbon dioxide to fit in a given container than otherwise would. Life jackets often contain canisters of pressured carbon dioxide for quick inflation. Aluminium capsules of are also sold as supplies of compressed gas for air guns, paintball markers/guns, inflating bicycle tires, and for making carbonated water. High concentrations of carbon dioxide can also be used to kill pests. Liquid carbon dioxide is used in supercritical drying of some food products and technological materials, in the preparation of specimens for scanning electron microscopy and in the decaffeination of coffee beans. + +Fire extinguisher + +Carbon dioxide can be used to extinguish flames by flooding the environment around the flame with the gas. It does not itself react to extinguish the flame, but starves the flame of oxygen by displacing it. Some fire extinguishers, especially those designed for electrical fires, contain liquid carbon dioxide under pressure. Carbon dioxide extinguishers work well on small flammable liquid and electrical fires, but not on ordinary combustible fires, because they do not cool the burning substances significantly, and when the carbon dioxide disperses, they can catch fire upon exposure to atmospheric oxygen. They are mainly used in server rooms. + +Carbon dioxide has also been widely used as an extinguishing agent in fixed fire-protection systems for local application of specific hazards and total flooding of a protected space. International Maritime Organization standards recognize carbon-dioxide systems for fire protection of ship holds and engine rooms. Carbon-dioxide-based fire-protection systems have been linked to several deaths, because it can cause suffocation in sufficiently high concentrations. A review of systems identified 51 incidents between 1975 and the date of the report (2000), causing 72 deaths and 145 injuries. + +Supercritical as solvent + +Liquid carbon dioxide is a good solvent for many lipophilic organic compounds and is used to remove caffeine from coffee. Carbon dioxide has attracted attention in the pharmaceutical and other chemical processing industries as a less toxic alternative to more traditional solvents such as organochlorides. It is also used by some dry cleaners for this reason. It is used in the preparation of some aerogels because of the properties of supercritical carbon dioxide. + +Medical and pharmacological uses +In medicine, up to 5% carbon dioxide (130 times atmospheric concentration) is added to oxygen for stimulation of breathing after apnea and to stabilize the / balance in blood. + +Carbon dioxide can be mixed with up to 50% oxygen, forming an inhalable gas; this is known as Carbogen and has a variety of medical and research uses. + +Another medical use are the mofette, dry spas that use carbon dioxide from post-volcanic discharge for therapeutic purposes. + +Energy + +Supercritical is used as the working fluid in the Allam power cycle engine. + +Fossil fuel recovery +Carbon dioxide is used in enhanced oil recovery where it is injected into or adjacent to producing oil wells, usually under supercritical conditions, when it becomes miscible with the oil. This approach can increase original oil recovery by reducing residual oil saturation by 7–23% additional to primary extraction. It acts as both a pressurizing agent and, when dissolved into the underground crude oil, significantly reduces its viscosity, and changing surface chemistry enabling the oil to flow more rapidly through the reservoir to the removal well. In mature oil fields, extensive pipe networks are used to carry the carbon dioxide to the injection points. + +In enhanced coal bed methane recovery, carbon dioxide would be pumped into the coal seam to displace methane, as opposed to current methods which primarily rely on the removal of water (to reduce pressure) to make the coal seam release its trapped methane. + +Bio transformation into fuel + +It has been proposed that from power generation be bubbled into ponds to stimulate growth of algae that could then be converted into biodiesel fuel. A strain of the cyanobacterium Synechococcus elongatus has been genetically engineered to produce the fuels isobutyraldehyde and isobutanol from using photosynthesis. + +Researchers have developed a process called electrolysis, using enzymes isolated from bacteria to power the chemical reactions which convert into fuels. + +Refrigerant + +Liquid and solid carbon dioxide are important refrigerants, especially in the food industry, where they are employed during the transportation and storage of ice cream and other frozen foods. Solid carbon dioxide is called "dry ice" and is used for small shipments where refrigeration equipment is not practical. Solid carbon dioxide is always below at regular atmospheric pressure, regardless of the air temperature. + + Liquid carbon dioxide (industry nomenclature R744 or R-744) was used as a refrigerant prior to the use of dichlorodifluoromethane (R12, a chlorofluorocarbon (CFC) compound). might enjoy a renaissance because one of the main substitutes to CFCs, 1,1,1,2-tetrafluoroethane (R134a, a hydrofluorocarbon (HFC) compound) contributes to climate change more than does. physical properties are highly favorable for cooling, refrigeration, and heating purposes, having a high volumetric cooling capacity. Due to the need to operate at pressures of up to , systems require highly mechanically resistant reservoirs and components that have already been developed for mass production in many sectors. In automobile air conditioning, in more than 90% of all driving conditions for latitudes higher than 50°, (R744) operates more efficiently than systems using HFCs (e.g., R134a). Its environmental advantages (GWP of 1, non-ozone depleting, non-toxic, non-flammable) could make it the future working fluid to replace current HFCs in cars, supermarkets, and heat pump water heaters, among others. Coca-Cola has fielded -based beverage coolers and the U.S. Army is interested in refrigeration and heating technology. + +Minor uses + +Carbon dioxide is the lasing medium in a carbon-dioxide laser, which is one of the earliest type of lasers. + +Carbon dioxide can be used as a means of controlling the pH of swimming pools, by continuously adding gas to the water, thus keeping the pH from rising. Among the advantages of this is the avoidance of handling (more hazardous) acids. Similarly, it is also used in the maintaining reef aquaria, where it is commonly used in calcium reactors to temporarily lower the pH of water being passed over calcium carbonate in order to allow the calcium carbonate to dissolve into the water more freely, where it is used by some corals to build their skeleton. + +Used as the primary coolant in the British advanced gas-cooled reactor for nuclear power generation. + +Carbon dioxide induction is commonly used for the euthanasia of laboratory research animals. Methods to administer include placing animals directly into a closed, prefilled chamber containing , or exposure to a gradually increasing concentration of . The American Veterinary Medical Association's 2020 guidelines for carbon dioxide induction state that a displacement rate of 30–70% of the chamber or cage volume per minute is optimal for the humane euthanasia of small rodents. Percentages of vary for different species, based on identified optimal percentages to minimize distress. + +Carbon dioxide is also used in several related cleaning and surface-preparation techniques. + +History of discovery + +Carbon dioxide was the first gas to be described as a discrete substance. In about 1640, the Flemish chemist Jan Baptist van Helmont observed that when he burned charcoal in a closed vessel, the mass of the resulting ash was much less than that of the original charcoal. His interpretation was that the rest of the charcoal had been transmuted into an invisible substance he termed a "gas" (from Greek "chaos") or "wild spirit" (spiritus sylvestris). + +The properties of carbon dioxide were further studied in the 1750s by the Scottish physician Joseph Black. He found that limestone (calcium carbonate) could be heated or treated with acids to yield a gas he called "fixed air". He observed that the fixed air was denser than air and supported neither flame nor animal life. Black also found that when bubbled through limewater (a saturated aqueous solution of calcium hydroxide), it would precipitate calcium carbonate. He used this phenomenon to illustrate that carbon dioxide is produced by animal respiration and microbial fermentation. In 1772, English chemist Joseph Priestley published a paper entitled Impregnating Water with Fixed Air in which he described a process of dripping sulfuric acid (or oil of vitriol as Priestley knew it) on chalk in order to produce carbon dioxide, and forcing the gas to dissolve by agitating a bowl of water in contact with the gas. + +Carbon dioxide was first liquefied (at elevated pressures) in 1823 by Humphry Davy and Michael Faraday. The earliest description of solid carbon dioxide (dry ice) was given by the French inventor Adrien-Jean-Pierre Thilorier, who in 1835 opened a pressurized container of liquid carbon dioxide, only to find that the cooling produced by the rapid evaporation of the liquid yielded a "snow" of solid . + +Carbon dioxide in combination with nitrogen was known from earlier times as Blackdamp, stythe or choke damp, Along with the other types of damp it was encountered in mining operations and well sinking. Slow oxidation of coal and biological processes replaced the oxygen to create a suffocating mixture of nitrogen and carbon dioxide. + +See also + + + + (from the atmosphere) + List of least carbon efficient power stations + List of countries by carbon dioxide emissions + + (early work on and climate change) + + NASA's + +Notes + +References + +External links + + Current global map of carbon dioxide concentration + CDC – NIOSH Pocket Guide to Chemical Hazards – Carbon Dioxide + Trends in Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide (NOAA) + + +Acid anhydrides +Acidic oxides +Coolants +Fire suppression agents +Greenhouse gases +Household chemicals +Inorganic solvents +Laser gain media +Nuclear reactor coolants +Oxocarbons +Propellants +Refrigerants +Gaseous signaling molecules +E-number additives +Triatomic molecules +Cheers is an American sitcom television series that ran on NBC from September 30, 1982, to May 20, 1993, with a total of 275 half-hour episodes across 11 seasons. The show was produced by Charles/Burrows/Charles Productions in association with Paramount Network Television and was created by the team of James Burrows and Glen and Les Charles. The show is set in the titular bar in Boston, where a group of locals meet to drink, relax and socialize. + +At the center of the show is the bar's owner and head bartender, Sam Malone, who is a womanizing former relief pitcher for the Boston Red Sox. The show's ensemble cast introduced in the pilot episode are waitresses Diane Chambers and Carla Tortelli, second bartender Coach Ernie Pantusso, and regular customers Norm Peterson and Cliff Clavin. Later main characters of the show also include Frasier Crane, Woody Boyd, Lilith Sternin, and Rebecca Howe. + +After premiering in 1982, it was nearly canceled during its first season when it ranked almost last in ratings for its premiere (74th out of 77 shows). However, Cheers eventually became a Nielsen ratings juggernaut in the United States, earning a top-10 rating during eight of its 11 seasons, including one season at number one (season 9). The show spent most of its run on NBC's Thursday night "Must See TV" lineup. Its widely watched series finale that was broadcast in 1993 became the most watched single TV episode of the 1990s, and the show's 275 episodes have been successfully syndicated worldwide. Nominated for Outstanding Comedy Series for all 11 of its seasons on the air, it earned 28 Primetime Emmy Awards from a record of 117 nominations. + +During its run, Cheers became one of the most popular series in history and received critical acclaim from its start to its end. In 1997, the episodes "Thanksgiving Orphans" and "Home Is the Sailor", aired originally in 1987, were respectively ranked No. 7 and No. 45 on TV Guides 100 Greatest Episodes of All Time. Its series finale was watched by an estimated 93 million viewers, almost 40% of the US population at the time. In 2002, Cheers was ranked No. 18 on TV Guides 50 Greatest TV Shows of All Time. In 2013, the Writers Guild of America ranked it as the eighth-best-written TV series and TV Guide ranked it No. 11 on their list of the 60 greatest shows. + +Characters +Before the Cheers pilot "Give Me a Ring Sometime" was completed and aired in 1982, the series consisted of four employees in the first script. Neither Norm Peterson nor Cliff Clavin, regular customers of Cheers, were featured; later revisions added them as among the regular characters of the series. + +In later years, Woody Boyd replaced Coach, after the character died off-screen in season three (1984–85), following actor Nicholas Colasanto's death. Frasier Crane started as a recurring character and became a permanent one. In season six (1987–88), new character Rebecca Howe was added, having been written into the show after the finale of the previous season (1986–87). Lilith Sternin started as a one-time character in an episode of season four, "Second Time Around" (1985). After her second season five appearance, she became a recurring character and was later featured as a permanent one during season 10 (1991–92). + +Original main characters + + Ted Danson as Sam Malone: A bartender and proprietor of Cheers, Sam is also a lothario. Before the series began, he was a baseball relief pitcher for the Boston Red Sox nicknamed "Mayday Malone" until he became an alcoholic, harming his career. He has an on-again, off-again relationship with Diane Chambers, his class opposite, in the first five seasons (1982–1987). During their off-times, Sam has flings with many not-so-bright "sexy women", yet fails to pursue a meaningful relationship. After Diane is written out of the series, he tries to pursue Rebecca Howe, with varying results. At the end of the series, he is still unmarried and faces his sexual addiction with the help of Dr. Robert Sutton's (Gilbert Lewis) group meetings, advised by Frasier. + Shelley Long as Diane Chambers: An academic, sophisticated graduate student attending Boston University. In the pilot, Diane is abandoned by her fiancé, leaving her without a job, a man, or money. Realizing that one of her few practical skills is memorization, which comes in handy when dealing with drink orders, she reluctantly becomes a barmaid. Later, she becomes a close friend of Coach and has an on-and-off relationship with bartender Sam Malone, her class opposite. During their off-relationship times, Diane dates men who fit her upper-class ideals, such as Frasier Crane. Diane returns to Cheers while dating Frasier to help cure Sam of his drinking addiction with help from Dr. Crane. Diane's biggest enemy is Carla, who frequently insults her, but Diane's lack of retaliation serves to annoy Carla even more. In 1987, Diane leaves Boston and leaves Sam for a writing and film or screen play writing career in California. She was supposed to return to Boston to marry Sam, but did not do so. + Nicholas Colasanto as "Coach" Ernie Pantusso: A "borderline senile" co-bartender, widower, and retired baseball coach. Coach is also a friend of Sam and a close friend of Diane. He has a daughter, Lisa (Allyce Beasley). Coach listens to people's problems and solves them. However, other people also help resolve his own problems. In 1985, Coach died without explicit explanation, as Colasanto died of a heart attack. + Rhea Perlman as Carla Tortelli: A "wisecracking, cynical" cocktail waitress, who treats customers badly. When the series premieres, she is the mother of five children by her ex-husband Nick Tortelli (Dan Hedaya). Over the course of the series, she bears three more, the depiction of which incorporated Perlman's real-life pregnancies. All of her children are ill behaved, except Ludlow, whose father is a prominent academic. She flirts with men, including ones who are not flattered by her ways, and believes in superstitions. Later, she marries Eddie LeBec, an ice hockey player, who later becomes a penguin mascot for ice shows. After he dies in an ice show accident by an ice resurfacer, Carla later discovers that Eddie had committed bigamy with another woman, whom he had gotten pregnant. Carla sleeps with Sam's enemy John Allen Hill to Sam's annoyance and anger. + George Wendt as Norm Peterson: A bar regular and occasionally employed accountant. A recurrent joke on the show, especially in the earlier seasons, is that the character was such a popular and constant fixture at the bar that anytime he entered through the front door, everyone present would yell out his name ("NORM!") in greeting; usually, this cry would be followed by one of the present bartenders asking Norm how he was, usually receiving a sardonic response and a request for a beer. ("It's a dog-eat-dog world, and I'm wearing Milkbone underwear.") He has infrequent accounting jobs and a troubled marriage with (but is still in love with and married to) Vera, an unseen character, though she is occasionally heard. Later in the series, he becomes a house painter and an interior decorator. Even later in the series, Norm secures his dream job, tasting beer at a brewery. The character was not originally intended to be a main cast role; Wendt auditioned for a minor role of George for the pilot episode. The role was only to be Diane Chambers' first customer and had only one word: "Beer!" After he was cast in a more permanent role, the character was renamed Norm. + +Subsequent main characters + + John Ratzenberger as Cliff Clavin: A know-it-all bar regular and mail carrier. He lives with his mother Esther Clavin (Frances Sternhagen) in first the family house and later an apartment. In the bar, Cliff continuously spouts nonsensical and annoying trivia, making him an object of derision for the bar patrons. Ratzenberger auditioned for the role of a minor character George, but it went to Wendt, evolving the role into Norm Peterson. The producers decided they wanted a resident bar know-it-all, so the security guard Cliff Clavin was added for the pilot, as a recurring character for the first season before becoming a main character starting with the second. The producers changed his occupation into a mail carrier as they thought such a man would have wider knowledge than a guard. + Kelsey Grammer as Frasier Crane: A psychiatrist and bar regular, a recurring character for seasons 3 and 4 who joins the main cast by season 5. Frasier started out as Diane Chambers' love interest in the third season (1984–85). In the fourth season (1985–86), after Diane jilts him at the altar in Europe, Frasier starts to frequent Cheers and becomes a regular. He later marries Lilith Sternin and has a son, Frederick. After the series ends, the character becomes the focus of the spin-off Frasier, in which he is divorced from Lilith and living in Seattle. + Woody Harrelson as Woody Boyd: A not-so-bright bartender, first appearing in season 4. He arrives from his Midwest hometown of Hanover, Indiana to Boston, to see Coach, his "pen pal" (as referring to exchanging "pens", not letters). When Sam tells Woody that Coach died, Sam hires Woody in Coach's place. Later, he marries his girlfriend Kelly Gaines (Jackie Swanson), also not-so-bright but raised in a rich family. In the final season, he runs for city council and, surprisingly, wins. + Bebe Neuwirth as Lilith Sternin: A psychiatrist and bar regular, a recurring character until joining the main cast in season 10. She is often teased by bar patrons about her uptight personality and appearance. In "Second Time Around" (1986), her first and only episode of the fourth season, her date with Frasier does not go well because they constantly argue. In the fifth season, with help from Diane, Lilith and Frasier begin a relationship. Eventually, they marry and have a son, Frederick. In the eleventh and final season, she leaves Frasier to live with another man in an experimental underground environment called the "Eco-pod". She returns later in the season and reconciles with Frasier. However, in the spin-off Frasier, the couple has divorced, with Lilith maintaining custody of Frederick. In season 11 of Cheers, Bebe Neuwirth is given "starring" credit only when she appears. + Kirstie Alley as Rebecca Howe: First appearing in season 6, she starts out as a strong independent woman, manager of the bar for the corporation that bought Cheers from Sam after his on-off relationship with Diane ended. Eventually, when Sam regains ownership, she begs him to let her remain, first as cocktail waitress and later as manager. She repeatedly has romantic failures with mainly rich men and becomes more and more "neurotic, insecure, and sexually frustrated". At the start, Sam frequently attempts to seduce Rebecca without success. As her personality changes, he loses interest in her. In the series finale, after failed relationships with rich men, Rebecca marries a plumber and quits working for the bar. In the Frasier episode "The Show Where Sam Shows Up", she is revealed to be divorced and back at the bar. When Frasier asks whether this means that she is working there again, Sam says, "No, she's just back at the bar." + +Character table + +Recurring characters + +Although Cheers operated largely around that main ensemble cast and their interactions with various one-off characters, guest stars and recurring characters did occasionally supplement them. Notable repeat guests included Dan Hedaya as Nick Tortelli and Jean Kasem as Loretta Tortelli (who were the main characters in the first spin-off, The Tortellis), Fred Dryer as Dave Richards, Annie Golden as Margaret O'Keefe, Derek McGrath as Andy Schroeder (also referred to as Andy Andy), interchangeably Joel Polis and Robert Desiderio as rival bar owner Gary, Jay Thomas as Eddie LeBec, Roger Rees as Robin Colcord, Tom Skerritt as Evan Drake, Frances Sternhagen as Esther Clavin, Richard Doyle as Walter Gaines, Keene Curtis as John Allen Hill, Anthony Cistaro as Henri, Michael McGuire as Professor Sumner Sloan, and Harry Anderson as Harry "The Hat" Gittes. Jackie Swanson, who played the recurring role of Woody's girlfriend and eventual wife "Kelly Gaines-Boyd", appeared in 24 episodes from 1989 to 1993. The character is as equally dim and naive—but ultimately as sweet-natured—as Woody. + +Paul Willson played the recurring barfly character Paul Krapence. (In one early appearance in the first season he was called "Glen", and was later credited on-screen as "Gregg" and "Tom", but he was playing the same character throughout.) Thomas Babson played "Tom", a law student often mocked by Cliff Clavin, for continually failing to pass the Massachusetts bar exam. "Al", played by Al Rosen, appeared in 38 episodes, and was known for his surly quips. Rhea Perlman's father Philip Perlman played the role of "Phil". + +Celebrity appearances +Other celebrities guest-starred in single episodes as themselves throughout the series. Sports figures appeared on the show as themselves, with a connection to Boston or Sam's former team, the Red Sox, such as Luis Tiant, Wade Boggs, and Kevin McHale (of the Boston Celtics). Some television stars also made guest appearances as themselves such as Alex Trebek, Arsenio Hall, Dick Cavett, Robert Urich, George McFarland and Johnny Carson. Various political figures even made appearances on Cheers such as then-Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral William J. Crowe, former Colorado Senator Gary Hart, then-Speaker of the House Tip O'Neill, then-Senator John Kerry, then-Governor Michael Dukakis, Ethel Kennedy (widow of Robert F. Kennedy), and then-Mayor of Boston Raymond Flynn, the last five of whom all represented Cheers' home state and city. + +In maternal roles, Glynis Johns, in a guest appearance in 1983, played Diane's mother, Helen Chambers. Nancy Marchand played Frasier's mother, Hester Crane, in an episode that aired in 1985. In an episode that aired in 1992, Celeste Holm – who had previously played Ted Danson's mother in "Three Men and a Baby" – appeared as Kelly's jokester of a paternal grandmother. Melendy Britt appeared in the episode "Woody or Won't He" (1990) as Kelly's mother, Roxanne Gaines, a very attractive high-society lady and a sexy, flirtatious upper-class cougar who tries to seduce Woody. + +The musician Harry Connick Jr. appeared in an episode as Woody's cousin and plays a song from his Grammy-winning album We Are in Love (). John Cleese won a Primetime Emmy Award for his guest appearance as "Dr. Simon Finch-Royce" in the fifth-season episode "Simon Says". Emma Thompson guest-starred as Nanny G/Nannette Guzman, a famous singing nanny and Frasier's ex-wife. Christopher Lloyd guest-starred as a tortured artist who wanted to paint Diane. Marcia Cross portrayed Rebecca's sister Susan in the season 7 episode Sisterly Love. John Mahoney once appeared as an inept jingle writer, which included a brief conversation with Frasier Crane, whose father he later portrayed on the spin-off Frasier. Peri Gilpin, who later played Roz Doyle on Frasier, also appeared in one episode of Cheers, in its 11th season, as Holly Matheson, a reporter who interviews Woody. The Righteous Brothers, Bobby Hatfield and Bill Medley, also guest-starred in different episodes. In "The Guy Can't Help It", Rebecca meets a plumber, played by Tom Berenger, who came to fix one of the beer keg taps. They marry in the series finale, triggering her resignation from Cheers. Judith Barsi appears in the episode Relief Bartender. + +Notable guest appearances of actresses portraying Sam's sexual conquests or potential sexual conquests include Kate Mulgrew in the three-episode finale of season four, portraying Boston councilwoman Janet Eldridge; Donna McKechnie as Debra, Sam's ex-wife (with whom he is on good terms), who pretends to be an intellectual in front of Diane; Barbara Babcock as Lana Marshall, a talent agent who specializes in representing male athletes, with whom she routinely sleeps on demand; Julia Duffy as Rebecca Prout, a depressed intellectual friend of Diane's; Alison LaPlaca as magazine reporter Paula Nelson; Carol Kane as Amanda, who Sam eventually learns was a fellow patient at the sanitarium with Diane; Barbara Feldon as Lauren Hudson, Sam's annual Valentine's Day fling (in an homage to Same Time, Next Year); Sandahl Bergman as Judy Marlowe, a longtime casual sex partner and whose now grown daughter, Laurie Marlowe (Chelsea Noble), who has always considered Sam a pseudo-father figure, Sam falls for; Madolyn Smith-Osborne as Dr. Sheila Rydell, a colleague of Frasier and Lilith; Valerie Mahaffey as Valerie Hill, John Allen Hill's daughter whom Sam pursues if only to gain an upper hand in his business relationship with Hill; and Alexis Smith as Alice Anne Volkman, Rebecca's much older ex-professor. In season 9, episode 17, I'm Getting My Act Together and Sticking It in Your Face, Sam, believing Rebecca wants a more serious relationship, pretends to be gay, his lover being a casual friend named Leon (Jeff McCarthy)—the plan ultimately leads to a kiss between Sam and Leon. + +Death of Nicholas Colasanto +Near the end of production of the third season, the writers of Cheers had to deal with the death of one of the main actors. Nicholas Colasanto's heart condition had been diagnosed in the mid-1970s, but it had worsened. He had lost weight and was having trouble breathing during filming, and he was hospitalized shortly before filming finished for season three due to fluid in his lungs. He recovered but was not cleared to return to work. He was visiting the set in January 1985 to watch the filming of several episodes, and co-star Shelley Long commented, "I think we were all in denial. We were all glad he was there, but he lost a lot of weight." Co-star Rhea Perlman added that he "wanted to be there so badly. He didn't want to be sick. He couldn't breathe well. It was hard. He was laboring all the time." Colasanto ultimately died of a heart attack at his home on February 12, 1985. + +The third-season episodes of Cheers were filmed out of order, partly to accommodate Shelley Long's pregnancy. As a result, they had already completed filming the season finale at the time of his death, which had scenes with Colasanto in it. + +The Cheers writing staff assembled in June 1985 to discuss how to deal with the absence of Coach. They quickly discarded the idea that he had moved away, as they felt that he would never abandon his friends. In addition, most viewers were aware of Colasanto's death, so the writing staff decided to handle the situation more openly. The season four opener, "Birth, Death, Love and Rice", dealt with Coach's death and introduced Woody Harrelson, Colasanto's replacement. + +Episodes + +Themes +Nearly all of Cheers takes place in the front room of the bar, but the characters often go into the rear pool room or the bar's office. Cheers does not show any action outside the bar until the first episode of the second season, which takes place in Diane's apartment. + +The show's main theme in its early seasons is the romance between intellectual waitress Diane Chambers and the bar's owner, Sam Malone, a former Major League Baseball pitcher for the Boston Red Sox and recovering alcoholic. After Shelley Long (Diane) left the show, the focus shifted to Sam's new relationship with Rebecca Howe, a neurotic corporate-ladder climber. + +Many Cheers scripts centered or touched upon a variety of social issues, albeit humorously. As Toasting Cheers puts it, "The script was further strengthened by the writers' boldness in successfully tackling controversial issues such as alcoholism, homosexuality, and adultery." + +Social class was a subtext of the show. The "upper class" —represented by characters like Diane Chambers, Frasier Crane and Lilith Sternin— rubbed shoulders with middle- and working-class characters —Sam Malone, Carla Tortelli, Norm Peterson and Cliff Clavin. An extreme example of this was the relationship between Woody Boyd and a millionaire's daughter, Kelly Gaines. Many viewers enjoyed Cheers in part because of this focus on character development in addition to plot development. + +Feminism and the role of women were also recurring themes throughout the show, with some critics seeing each of the major female characters portraying an aspect as a flawed feminist in her own way. Diane was a vocal feminist, and Sam was the epitome of everything she hated: promiscuity and chauvinism. (See "Sam and Diane".) + +Homosexuality was dealt with from the first season, which was rare in the early 1980s on American television. In the first-season episode "The Boys in the Bar" (the title being a reference to the play and subsequent movie The Boys in the Band), a friend and former teammate of Sam's comes out in his autobiography. Some of the male regulars pressure Sam to take action to ensure that Cheers does not become a gay bar. The episode won a GLAAD Media Award, and the script's writers, Ken Levine and David Isaacs, were nominated for a Primetime Emmy Award. + +Addiction also plays a role in Cheers, almost exclusively through Sam. He is a recovering alcoholic who had bought a bar during his drinking days. Frasier has a notable bout of drinking in the fourth-season episode "The Triangle", while Woody develops a gambling problem in the seventh season's "Call Me Irresponsible". Carla and other characters drink beer while pregnant, but nobody seems to mind. + +Cheers owners + +Cheers had several owners before Sam, as the bar was opened in 1889. The "Est. 1895" on the bar's sign is a made-up date chosen by Carla for numerology purposes, revealed in season 8, episode 6, "The Stork Brings a Crane", which also revealed the bar's address as 112 Beacon Street and that it originated under the name Mom's. In the series' second episode, "Sam's Women", Coach tells a customer looking for Gus, the owner of Cheers, that Gus was dead. In a later episode, Gus O'Mally comes back from Arizona for one night and helps run the bar. + +The biggest storyline surrounding the ownership of Cheers begins in the fifth-season finale, "I Do, Adieu", when Sam and Diane part ways, due to Shelley Long's departure from the series. In addition, Sam leaves on a trip to circumnavigate the globe. Before he leaves, Sam sells Cheers to the Lillian Corporation. He returns in the sixth-season premiere, "Home is the Sailor", having sunk his boat, to find the bar under the new management of Rebecca Howe. He begs for his job back and is hired by Rebecca as a bartender. In the seventh-season premiere, "How to Recede in Business", Rebecca is fired and Sam is promoted to manager. Rebecca is allowed to keep a job at Lillian vaguely similar to what she had before, but only after Sam had Rebecca (in absentia) "agree" to a long list of demands that the corporation had for her. + +From there, Sam occasionally attempts to buy the bar back with schemes that usually involve the wealthy executive Robin Colcord. Sam acquired Cheers again in the eighth-season finale, when it was sold back to him for 85¢ by the Lillian Corporation, after he alerted the company to Colcord's insider trading. Fired by the corporation because of her silence on the issue, Rebecca is hired by Sam as a hostess/office manager. For the rest of the episode, to celebrate Sam's reclaiming the bar, a huge banner reading "Under OLD Management!" hangs from the staircase. When it was learned that the Pool Room and bathrooms were actually owned by Melville's (which spawned a war of wits between Sam and Melville's owner John Allen Hill), Rebecca later purchased them from Hill, making Sam and Rebecca partners in the ownership of Cheers (and more or less co-ran the establishment). + +Sam had two main battles, one with Gary's Olde Towne Tavern, trying to beat them at some activity or another but always failing, except for one episode when Diane helped Cheers win the bowling trophy, and extending to the practical jokes they played on each other. The second was with Melville's owner John Allen Hill who kept annoying Sam with his pettiness and ego. Hill had an ongoing relationship with Carla. + +Production + +Creation and concept +Some believe that the show is a rehashing of Boston's ABC affiliate WCVB's locally produced 1979 sitcom Park Street Under featuring Steve Sweeney and American Repertory Theater founder Karen MacDonald. Three men developed and created the Cheers television series: Glen and Les Charles ("Glen and Les") and James Burrows, who identified themselves as "two Mormons and a Jew." They aimed at "creating a show around a Spencer Tracy-Katharine Hepburn-type relationship" between their two main characters, Sam and Diane. Malone represents the average man, while Chambers represents class and sophistication. The show revolves around characters in a bar under "humorous adult themes" and "situations". + +The original idea was a group of workers who interacted like a family, the goal being a concept similar to The Mary Tyler Moore Show. The creators considered making an American version of the British Fawlty Towers, set in a hotel or an inn. When the creators settled on a bar as their setting, the show began to resemble the radio program Duffy's Tavern, originally written and cocreated by James Burrows' father Abe Burrows. They liked the idea of a tavern, as it provided a continuous stream of new people, for a variety of characters. An early concept revolved around a woman becoming the new owner of the bar and the animosity created between her and the regulars, an idea that was used later in Season 6 when the character of Rebecca Howe is introduced. + +Early discussions about the location of the show centered on Barstow, California, then Kansas City, Missouri. They eventually turned to the East Coast and finally Boston. The Bull & Finch Pub in Boston, which was the model for Cheers, was chosen from a phone book. When Glen Charles asked the bar's owner, Tom Kershaw, to shoot exterior and interior photos, he agreed, charging $1. Kershaw has since gone on to make millions of dollars, licensing the pub's image and selling a variety of Cheers memorabilia. The Bull & Finch became the 42nd-busiest outlet in the American food and beverage industry in 1997. During initial casting, Shelley Long, who was in Boston at the time filming A Small Circle of Friends, remarked that the bar in the script resembled a bar she had come upon in the city, which turned out to be the Bull & Finch. + +Production team +The crew of Cheers numbered in the hundreds. The three creators—James Burrows and Glen and Les Charles—kept offices on Paramount's lot for the duration of the Cheers run. The Charles Brothers remained in overall charge throughout the show's run, frequently writing major episodes, though starting with the third season they began delegating the day-to-day running of the writing staff to various showrunners. Ken Estin and Sam Simon were appointed as showrunners for the third season, and succeeded by David Angell, Peter Casey and David Lee the following year. Angell, Casey and Lee would remain as showrunners until the end of the seventh season when they left to develop their own sitcom, Wings, and were replaced by Bill and Cheri Steinkellner and Phoef Sutton for the eighth through tenth seasons. For the final season, Tom Anderson and Dan O'Shannon acted as the showrunners. + +James Burrows is regarded as being a factor in the show's longevity, directing 243 of the 270 episodes and supervising the show's production. Among the show's other directors were Andy Ackerman, Thomas Lofaro, Tim Berry, Tom Moore, Rick Beren, as well as cast members John Ratzenberger and George Wendt. + +Craig Safan provided the series' original music for its entire run except the theme song. His extensive compositions for the show led to his winning numerous ASCAP Top TV Series awards for his music. + +Casting +The character of Sam Malone was originally intended to be a retired football player and was slated to be played by Fred Dryer, but Danson was chosen in part because he was younger and had more acting experience than Dryer. After casting Ted Danson, it was decided that a former baseball player (Sam "Mayday" Malone) would be more believable than a retired football player. Dryer, however, would go on to play sportscaster Dave Richards, an old friend of Sam, in three episodes. Bill Cosby was also considered early in the casting process for the role of Sam, after being recommended by the network. + +Shelley Long was recommended by various sources to the producers for the role of Diane Chambers, but Long wished to be offered the part straight out and had to be coaxed into giving an audition. When she did read for the part, according to Glen Charles, "that was it, we knew that we wanted her." Before the final decision was made, three pairs of actors were tested in front of the producers and network executives for Sam and Diane: Danson and Long, Fred Dryer and Julia Duffy, William Devane and Lisa Eichhorn. The chemistry was so apparent between Long and Danson that it secured them the roles. Ted Danson was sent to bartending school to prepare him for the part and according to Burrows, had to learn "how to pretend that he knew a lot about sports" since Danson was not a sports fan in real life and had never been to a baseball game. + +The character of Cliff Clavin was created for John Ratzenberger after he auditioned for the role of Norm Peterson, which eventually went to George Wendt. While chatting with producers afterward, he asked if they were going to include a "bar know-it-all", the part he eventually played. Alley joined the cast when Shelley Long left, and Woody Harrelson joined when Nicholas Colasanto died. Danson, Perlman and Wendt were the only actors to appear in every episode of the series; Ratzenberger appears in all but one (and his name wasn't part of the opening credit montage during the first season). + +Filming styles and locations + +Most Cheers episodes were, as a voiceover stated at the start of each, "filmed before a live studio audience" on Paramount Stage 25 in Hollywood, generally on Tuesday nights. Scripts for a new episode were issued the Wednesday before for a read-through, Friday was rehearsal day, and final scripts were issued on Monday. Burrows, who directed most episodes, insisted on using film stock rather than videotape. He was also noted for using motion in his directorial style, trying to constantly keep characters moving rather than standing still. Burrows and the Charles brothers emphasized to the cast to "never assume that you're not being watched" because the camera would be focused on the actors at all times, so they had to always be reacting and "always be funny". During the first season when ratings were poor Paramount and NBC asked that the show use videotape to save money, but a poor test taping ended the experiment and Cheers continued to use film. + +Due to a decision by Glen and Les Charles, the cold open was often not connected to the rest of the episode, with the lowest-ranked writers assigned to create the jokes for them. Some cold opens were taken from episodes that ran too long. + +The first year of the show took place entirely within the confines of the bar, the first location outside the bar being Diane's apartment in the second year. When the series became a hit, the characters started venturing further afield, first to other sets and eventually to an occasional exterior location. The exterior location shots of the bar are of the Bull & Finch Pub, located directly north of the Boston Public Garden. The pub has become a tourist attraction because of its association with the series, and draws nearly one million visitors annually. It has since been renamed Cheers Beacon Hill; its interior is different from the TV bar. The pub itself is at 84 Beacon Street (on the corner of Brimmer Street). In August 2001, there was a replica made of the bar in Faneuil Hall to capitalize on the popularity of the show. + +After the show ended, the 1,000-square-foot bar set from Cheers was offered to the Smithsonian, which turned it down because it was too large. It was displayed for a short time at the defunct Hollywood Entertainment Museum, but later returned to storage, where it remained for many years. In 2014, CBS donated the set to the Museum of Television after a years-long campaign by James Burrows and his office on behalf of the museum's founder, James Comisar. At the time of the donation, Comisar initiated a planned $100,000 restoration of the set using former conservators from the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, although a site for the 10,000 item collection of the museum had not been decided upon. + +Theme song + +Before "Where Everybody Knows Your Name", written by Gary Portnoy and Judy Hart Angelo, became the show's theme song, Cheers producers rejected two of Portnoy's and Hart Angelo's songs. The songwriters had collaborated to provide music for Preppies, an unsuccessful Broadway musical. When told they could not appropriate "People Like Us", Preppies opening song, the pair wrote another song, "My Kind of People", which resembles "People Like Us" and was intended to satirize "the lifestyle of old decadent old-money WASPs", but to meet producers' demands, they rewrote the lyrics to be about "likeable losers" in a Boston bar. The show's producers rejected this song, as well. After they read the script of the series pilot, they created another song "Another Day". When Portnoy and Hart Angelo heard that NBC had commissioned thirteen episodes, they created an official theme song "Where Everybody Knows Your Name" and rewrote the lyrics. On syndicated airings of Cheers, the theme song was shortened to make room for additional commercials. + +Reception + +Critical reception +Cheers was critically acclaimed in its first season, though it landed a disappointing 74th out of 77 shows in that year's ratings. This critical support, the early success at the Primetime Emmy Awards, and the support of the president of NBC's entertainment division Brandon Tartikoff, are thought to be the main reasons for the show's survival and eventual success. Tartikoff stated in 1983 that Cheers was a sophisticated adult comedy and that NBC executives "never for a second doubted" that the show would be renewed. Writer Levine believes that the most important reason was that the network recognized that it did not have other hit shows to help promote Cheers; as he later wrote, "[NBC] had nothing else better to replace it with." + +Writing in 2016, drama critic Chris Jones called Cheers "a hinge sitcom – one foot in classic bits and shtick not far removed from Mel Brooks and another in ambitious, Seinfeld-like absurdism." In 2013, GQ magazine held an online competition to find the best TV comedy. Cheers was voted the greatest comedy show of all time. In 2017, James Charisma of Paste magazine ranked the show's opening sequence No. 5 on a list of The 75 Best TV Title Sequences of All Time. In 2022, Rolling Stone ranked Cheers as the eighth-greatest TV show of all time. + +Ratings + +Ratings improved for the summer reruns after the first season. The cast went on various talk shows to try to further promote the series after its first season. By the second season Cheers was competitive with CBS's top-rated show Simon & Simon. With the growing popularity of Family Ties, which ran in the slot ahead of Cheers from January 1984 until Family Ties was moved to Sundays in 1987, and the placement of The Cosby Show in front of both at the start of their third season (1984), the line-up became a runaway ratings success that NBC eventually dubbed "Must See Thursday". The next season, Cheers ratings increased dramatically after Woody Boyd became a regular character as well. The fifth season earned the series the highest rating for the year that it would ever achieve. Although ratings mostly declined each year after that, the show retained a competitive advantage and rose to rank number one for the year for its first and only time in the ninth season. Although ratings and ranking both lost ground in the last two seasons, it still performed well, as it was the only show on NBC during those seasons to be in the top 10. By the end of its final season, the show had a run of eight consecutive seasons in the top ten of the Nielsen ratings; seven of them were in the top five. + +NBC dedicated a whole night to the final episode of Cheers, following the one-hour season finale of Seinfeld (which was its lead-in). The show began with a "pregame" show hosted by Bob Costas, followed by the final 98-minute episode itself. NBC affiliates then aired tributes to Cheers during their local newscasts, and the night concluded with a special Tonight Show broadcast live from the Bull & Finch Pub. Although the episode fell short of its hyped ratings predictions to become the most-watched television episode, it was the most watched show that year, bringing in 93 million viewers (64 percent of all viewers that night), almost 40% of the US population at the time, and ranked 11th all time in entertainment programming. The 1993 final broadcast of Cheers also emerged as the highest rated broadcast of NBC to date, as well as the most watched single episode from any television series throughout the decade 1990s on U.S. television. + +The episode originally aired in the usual Cheers spot of Thursday night, and was then rebroadcast on Sunday. While the original broadcast did not outperform the M*A*S*H finale, the combined non-repeating audiences for the Thursday and Sunday showings did. Television had greatly changed between the two finales, leaving Cheers with a broader array of competition for ratings. + +NBC timeslots: + Season 1 Episodes 1–12: Thursday at 9:00 pm + Season 1 Episode 13 – Season 2 Episode 10: Thursday at 9:30 pm + Season 2 Episode 11 – Season 11 Episode 28: Thursday at 9:00 pm + +Serialized storylines +Although not the first sitcom to do it, Cheers employed the use of end-of-season cliffhangers and, starting with the third season, the show's storylines became more serialized. The show's success helped make such multi-episode story arcs popular on sitcoms, which Les Charles regrets. +[W]e may have been partly responsible for what's going on now, where if you miss the first episode or two, you are lost. You have to wait until you can get the whole thing on DVD and catch up with it. If that blood is on our hands, I feel kind of badly about it. It can be very frustrating." + +Cheers began with a limited five-character ensemble consisting of Ted Danson, Shelley Long, Rhea Perlman, Nicholas Colasanto and George Wendt. Cheers was able to gradually phase in characters such as Cliff, Frasier, Lilith, Rebecca, and Woody. By the time season 10 began, the show had eight front characters in its roster. + +Awards and honors + +Over its eleven-season run, the Cheers cast and crew earned many awards. The show garnered a record 111 Primetime Emmy Award nominations, with a total of 28 wins. In addition, Cheers earned 31 Golden Globe nominations, with a total of six wins. Danson, Long, Alley, Perlman, Wendt, Ratzenberger, Harrelson, Grammer, Neuwirth, and Colasanto all received Emmy nominations for their roles. Cheers won the Golden Globe Award for "Best TV-Series – Comedy/Musical" in 1991 and the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Comedy Series in 1983, 1984, 1989, and 1991. The series was presented with the "Legend Award" at the 2006 TV Land Awards, with many of the surviving cast members attending the event. + +The following are awards that have been earned by the Cheers cast and crew over its 11-season run: + +Distribution + +Syndication +Cheers grew in popularity as it aired on American television and entered off-network syndication in 1987, initially distributed by Paramount Domestic Television. When the show went off the air in 1993, Cheers was syndicated in 38 countries, with 179 American television markets and 83 million viewers. When the quality of some earlier footage of Cheers began to deteriorate, it underwent a careful restoration in 2001. The series aired on Nick at Nite from 2001 to 2004 and on TV Land from 2004 to 2008, with Nick at Nite airing week-long Cheers "Everybody Knows Your Name" marathons. The show was removed from the lineup in 2004. +The series began airing on Hallmark Channel in the United States in October 2008, and WGN America in 2009. In January 2011, Reelz Channel began airing the series in hour-long blocks. MeTV began airing Cheers weeknights in 2010. USA Network has aired the series on Sunday early mornings and weekday mornings to allow it to show extended-length films of hours and maintain symmetric schedules. + +In 2011, Cheers was made available on the Netflix and Amazon Prime Video streaming services. + +Cheers began airing on Eleven (a digital channel of Network Ten) in Australia on January 11, 2011. NCRV in the Netherlands aired all 275 episodes in sequence, once per night, repeating the series a total of three times. + +In Italy, Cheers aired on Italia 1 & Canale 5 as Cin Cin from 1985 until 1988. + +Cheers was first screened in the UK on Channel 4, and was one of the then-fledgling network's first imports. As of 2012, Cheers has been repeated on UK satellite channel CBS Drama. It has also been shown on the UK free-to-air channel ITV4, with two episodes every weeknight. On March 16, 2015, the series began airing on UK subscription channel Gold on weekdays at 9:30 a.m. and 10:00 a.m. Cheers aired again daily in 2019 on Channel 4. + +High definition +A high-definition transfer of Cheers began running on HDNet in the United States in August 2010. The program was originally shot on film (but transferred to and edited on videotape) and broadcast in a 4:3 aspect ratio, but the newly transferred versions are in 16:9. However, in the United Kingdom, the HD repeats on ITV4 HD, and later Channel 4 HD, are shown in the original 4:3 aspect ratio. + +Home media +Paramount Home Entertainment and (from 2006 onward) CBS Home Entertainment have released all 11 seasons of Cheers on DVD in Region 1, Region 2, and Region 4. In the US, some episodes from the final three seasons appear on the DVDs with music substitutions. For example, in the episode "Grease", "I Fought the Law" was replaced even though its removal affects the comedic value of the scenes in which it was originally heard. The finale episode (73 minutes long without commercials) is presented in its three-part syndicated cut. + +On March 6, 2012, CBS released Fan Favorites: The Best of Cheers. Based on the 2012 Facebook poll, the selected episodes are: + + "Give Me a Ring Sometime" (season 1, episode 1) + "Diane's Perfect Date" (season 1, episode 17) + "Pick a Con, Any Con" (season 1, episode 19) + "Abnormal Psychology" (season 5, episode 4) + "Thanksgiving Orphans" (season 5, episode 9) + "Dinner at Eight-ish" (season 5, episode 20) + "Simon Says" (season 5, episode 21) + "An Old Fashioned Wedding", parts one and two (season 10, episodes 25) + +On May 5, 2015, CBS DVD released Cheers – The Complete Series on DVD in Region 1. + +Digital media distribution +The complete 11 seasons of Cheers are available through the iTunes Store, Amazon Prime Video, Peacock and Hulu. In Canada, all seasons are available on streaming service Crave. + +The entire series is available in the UK on All 4. + +Licensing +The series lent itself naturally to the development of Cheers bar-related merchandise, culminating in the development of a chain of Cheers themed pubs. Paramount's licensing group, led by Tom McGrath, developed the Cheers pub concept initially in partnership with Host Marriott, which placed Cheers themed pubs in over 15 airports around the world. Boston boasts the original Cheers bar, historically known to Boston insiders as the Bull and Finch; a Cheers restaurant in the Faneuil Hall marketplace; and Sam's Place, a spin-off sports bar concept also located in Faneuil Hall. In 1997, Europe's first officially licensed Cheers bar opened in London's Regent's Street W1. Like Cheers Faneuil Hall, Cheers London is a replica of the set. The gala opening was attended by James Burrows and cast members George Wendt and John Ratzenberger. The Cheers bar in London closed on December 31, 2008. The actual bar set had been on display at the Hollywood Entertainment Museum until the museum's closing in early 2006. + +The theme song to the show was eventually licensed to a Canadian restaurant, Kelsey's Neighbourhood Bar & Grill. + +CBS currently holds the rights to the Cheers franchise as a result of the 2005 Viacom split which saw Paramount transfer its entire television studio to CBS (both CBS and Viacom would reunite in 2019). + +Spin-offs +Some of the actors and actresses from Cheers brought their characters onto other television shows, either in a guest appearance or on a new spin-off series. The most successful Cheers spin-off was Frasier, which featured Frasier Crane following his relocation back to Seattle, Washington. Sam, Diane, and Woody all individually appeared in Frasier episodes, with Lilith appearing as a guest on multiple episodes. In the season nine episode "Cheerful Goodbyes", Frasier returns to Boston and meets up with the Cheers gang, later attending Cliff's retirement party. Frasier was revived in 2023, moving back to the Boston setting of Cheers. + +Although Frasier was more successful, The Tortellis was the first series to spin off from Cheers, premiering in 1987. The show featured Carla's ex-husband Nick Tortelli and his wife Loretta, but was canceled after 13 episodes and drew protests for its stereotypical depictions of Italian Americans. + +Crossovers + +In addition to direct spin-offs, several Cheers characters had guest appearance crossovers with other shows, including Wings and St. Elsewhere (episode "Cheers"). Cheers has also been spoofed or referenced in other media, including The Simpsons (spoofing the title sequence and theme song in "Flaming Moe's"; actually visiting the place with vocal role reprises of the majority of the principal cast in "Fear of Flying"), Scrubs (episode "My Life in Four Cameras"), and the 2012 comedy film Ted. + +The eighth-anniversary special of Late Night with David Letterman, airing in 1990, begins with a scene at Cheers in which the bar's TV gets stuck on NBC and all the bar patrons decide to go home instead of staying to watch David Letterman. The scene was re-used to open Letterman's final episode in 1993. A similar scene aired in the Super Bowl XVII Pregame Show on NBC, in which the characters briefly discuss the upcoming game. + +In 2019, members of the Cheers cast, Rhea Perlman, George Wendt, John Ratzenberger and Kirstie Alley reprised their characters in an episode of The Goldbergs where they play customers of Geoff's short-lived food delivery business. + +In the 2010 show "Adventure Time", the show Cheers is referenced a few times, usually by Ice King/Simon because it was his favorite show back when he was a human living in the 20th century. This is explored in greater detail in the 2023 spin-off series Fionna and Cake, which is partially set within the mind of Simon. All televisions in that world simply play an animated rendition of Cheers reruns on every channel, and the characters sometimes sing the theme song in difficult moments. The season finale of the show is simply entitled "Cheers". + +Cultural references +In Australia, Cheers is remembered for its role in the infamous cancellation of the 1992 Nine Network special Australia's Naughtiest Home Videos. Due to the then-owner of Nine Network Kerry Packer's objections to its content, Australia's Naughtiest Home Videos was pulled off the air during its first and only broadcast; viewers saw the network abruptly begin airing a rerun of Cheers midway through the special, either after a scheduled commercial break or a Nine Network bumper claiming a technical problem. Nine Network's affiliate in Perth didn't air the special at all and filled its timeslot with two episodes of Cheers. When the program was re-aired in its entirety in 2008, it abruptly cut away to the opening of Cheers midway through in a reenactment of the incident before resuming the second half that didn't get aired. + +In the Cheers episode "Woody For Hire, Norman Meets the Apes" Woody shows and tells everyone how he was an extra on Boston based drama Spenser: For Hire. In the season 4 episode of Seinfeld titled "The Pitch", Jerry and George are presenting their idea for a sitcom to NBC executives. George is unhappy with their offer and feels that he deserves the same salary as Ted Danson which he claims was $800,000 per episode, being that Cheers is also an NBC show. Danson's reported salary was actually $250,000 per episode. At this point Cheers was in its 10th season and Ted Danson had won an Emmy and a Golden Globe the year before. + +In the seventh episode of the second season of How I Met Your Mother, a coffee shop barista mistakenly hears Barney's name as "Swarley" and writes it on his cup. This leads to a running gag in which everyone mercilessly refers to Barney as "Swarley" despite his protests, which culminates in everyone in McClaren's bar shouting "Swarley" when he enters and playing the Cheers theme song. The credits are then shown in the "Cheers" style. In the season seven episode, In Tailgate, Ted and Barney are outraged with the price to get into MacLaren's on New Year's Eve, so they offer for everyone to come upstairs. In the apartment, there is a puzzles sign that is designed to parody Cheers. Ted and Barney employ Kevin as their bartender, and they invent a theme song which also parodies the Cheers theme song. + +In the 2004 video game Tony Hawk's Underground 2, "Jeers" is set in the Boston map, with the typeface referencing the Cheers logo. It is located down a set of stairs, and when near the front door, there is bar chatter coming from inside. + +In the 2015 video game Fallout 4, which is set in Boston, there is a bar named Prost Bar near Boston Common that, when entered, is an almost exact replica of the bar featured on the series. It includes two dead bodies sitting at the end of the bar, with one of them wearing a mail carrier's uniform, a direct reference to regular barfly Cliff Clavin. + +In the season 2 finale of the NBC sitcom The Good Place, Ted Danson's character Michael appears as a bartender while wearing a blue plaid button-down, in a clear homage to Danson's character in Cheers. + +Remake +In September 2011, Plural Entertainment debuted a remake of the series on Spanish television, also titled Cheers. Set at an Irish pub, it starred Alberto San Juan as Nicolás "Nico" Arnedo, the equivalent of Sam Malone in the original series. It also used the original theme song, rerecorded in Spanish by Dani Martín, under the title "Donde la gente se divierte." + +In December 2012, The Irish Film and Television Network announced that casting was underway on an Irish-language version of Cheers produced by production company Sideline. The new show, tentatively titled Teach Seán, would air on Ireland's TG4 and features a main character who, like Sam Malone, is a bar owner, a retired athlete and a recovering alcoholic. However, because of being set in Ireland, the barman is a "former hurling star" rather than an ex-baseball player. As of August 2019, the Irish remake has not occurred. + +Cheers: Live on Stage +On September 9, 2016, a stage adaptation called Cheers: Live on Stage opened at the Shubert Theatre in Boston. Comprising pieces of the original TV series, the play was adapted by Erik Forrest Jackson. It was produced by Troika/Stageworks. The director was Matt Lenz. It starred Grayson Powell as Sam Malone, Jillian Louis as Diane Chambers, Barry Pearl as Ernie 'Coach' Pantusso, Sarah Sirotta as Carla Tortelli, Paul Vogt as Norm Peterson, and Buzz Roddy as Cliff Clavin. The production was scheduled to tour through 2017, but was cancelled in 2016. + +See also + + Early Doors (2003) + Park Street Under (1979) + +Notes + +References + +Bibliography + +Further reading + + + + Darowski, Joseph J.; Darowski, Kate (2019) Cheers: A Cultural History. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield. + + + + + Snauffer, Douglas (2008). The Show Must Go On: How the Deaths of Lead Actors Have Affected Television Series. Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland. . + +External links + + + + + + Cheers at Museum of Broadcast Communications + Cheers Boston, an official website of a bar that tributes to and is also a production set of Cheers + Cheers Bruchsal Bar in Bruchsal cheersbruchsal.de + + +1982 American television series debuts +1993 American television series endings +1980s American sitcoms +1990s American sitcoms +1980s American workplace comedy television series +1990s American workplace comedy television series +20th century in Boston +Alcohol abuse in television +Best Musical or Comedy Series Golden Globe winners +Boston Red Sox +Culture of Boston +Cultural history of Boston +English-language television shows +Fictional drinking establishments +NBC original programming +Nielsen ratings winners +Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Comedy Series winners +Primetime Emmy Award-winning television series +Television series about couples +Television series by CBS Studios +Television shows set in Boston +Television shows filmed in Los Angeles +Television shows set in Massachusetts +In music, counterpoint is the relationship between two or more musical lines (or voices) which are harmonically interdependent yet independent in rhythm and melodic contour. It has been most commonly identified in the European classical tradition, strongly developing during the Renaissance and in much of the common practice period, especially in the Baroque period. The term originates from the Latin punctus contra punctum meaning "point against point", i.e. "note against note". + +In Western pedagogy, counterpoint is taught through a system of species (see below). + +There are several different forms of counterpoint, including imitative counterpoint and free counterpoint. Imitative counterpoint involves the repetition of a main melodic idea across different vocal parts, with or without variation. Compositions written in free counterpoint often incorporate non-traditional harmonies and chords, chromaticism and dissonance. + +General principles +The term "counterpoint" has been used to designate a voice or even an entire composition. Counterpoint focuses on melodic interaction—only secondarily on the harmonies produced by that interaction. In the words of John Rahn: + +Work initiated by Guerino Mazzola (born 1947) has given counterpoint theory a mathematical foundation. In particular, Mazzola's model gives a structural (and not psychological) foundation of forbidden parallels of fifths and the dissonant fourth. Octavio Agustin has extended the model to microtonal contexts. + +In counterpoint, the functional independence of voices is the prime concern. The violation of this principle leads to special effects, which are avoided in counterpoint. In organ registers, certain interval combinations and chords are activated by a single key so that playing a melody results in parallel voice leading. These voices, losing independence, are fused into one and the parallel chords are perceived as single tones with a new timbre. This effect is also used in orchestral arrangements; for instance, in Ravel’s Bolero #5 the parallel parts of flutes, horn and celesta resemble the sound of an electric organ. In counterpoint, parallel voices are prohibited because they violate the homogeneity of musical texture when independent voices occasionally disappear turning into a new timbre quality and vice versa. + +Development +Some examples of related compositional techniques include: the round (familiar in folk traditions), the canon, and perhaps the most complex contrapuntal convention: the fugue. All of these are examples of imitative counterpoint. + +Examples from the repertoire +There are many examples of song melodies that are harmonically interdependent yet independent in rhythm and melodic contour. For example, "Frère Jacques" and "Three Blind Mice" combine euphoniously when sung together. A number of popular songs that share the same chord progression can also be sung together as counterpoint. A well-known pair of examples is "My Way" combined with "Life on Mars". + +Bach's 3-part Invention in F minor combines three independent melodies: + +According to pianist András Schiff, Bach's counterpoint influenced the composing of both Mozart and Beethoven. In the development section of the opening movement of Beethoven's Piano Sonata in E minor, Beethoven demonstrates this influence by adding "a wonderful counterpoint" to one of the main themes. + +A further example of fluid counterpoint in late Beethoven may be found in the first orchestral variation on the "Ode to Joy" theme in the last movement of Beethoven's Symphony No. 9, bars 116–123. The famous theme is heard on the violas and cellos, while "the basses add a bass-line whose sheer unpredictability gives the impression that it is being spontaneously improvised. Meantime a solo bassoon adds a counterpoint that has a similarly impromptu quality." + +In the Prelude to Richard Wagner's opera Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg, three themes from the opera are combined simultaneously. According to Gordon Jacob, "This is universally and justly acclaimed as an extraordinary feat of virtuosity." However, Donald Tovey points out that here "the combination of themes ... unlike classical counterpoint, really do not of themselves combine into complete or euphonious harmony." + +One spectacular example of 5-voice counterpoint can be found in the finale to Mozart's Symphony No 41 ("Jupiter" Symphony). Here five tunes combine simultaneously in "a rich tapestry of dialogue": + +See also Invertible counterpoint. + +Species counterpoint + +Species counterpoint was developed as a pedagogical tool in which students progress through several "species" of increasing complexity, with a very simple part that remains constant known as the cantus firmus (Latin for "fixed melody"). Species counterpoint generally offers less freedom to the composer than other types of counterpoint and therefore is called a "strict" counterpoint. The student gradually attains the ability to write free counterpoint (that is, less rigorously constrained counterpoint, usually without a cantus firmus) according to the given rules at the time. The idea is at least as old as 1532, when Giovanni Maria Lanfranco described a similar concept in his Scintille di musica (Brescia, 1533). The 16th-century Venetian theorist Zarlino elaborated on the idea in his influential Le institutioni harmoniche, and it was first presented in a codified form in 1619 by Lodovico Zacconi in his Prattica di musica. Zacconi, unlike later theorists, included a few extra contrapuntal techniques, such as invertible counterpoint. + +In 1725 Johann Joseph Fux published Gradus ad Parnassum (Steps to Parnassus), in which he described five species: + +Note against note; +Two notes against one; +Four notes against one; +Notes offset against each other (as suspensions); +All the first four species together, as "florid" counterpoint. + +A succession of later theorists quite closely imitated Fux's seminal work, often with some small and idiosyncratic modifications in the rules. Many of Fux's rules concerning the purely linear construction of melodies have their origin in solfeggi. Concerning the common practice era, alterations to the melodic rules were introduced to enable the function of certain harmonic forms. The combination of these melodies produced the basic harmonic structure, the figured bass. + +Considerations for all species +The following rules apply to melodic writing in each species, for each part: + +The final note must be approached by step. If the final is approached from below, then the leading tone must be raised in a minor key (Dorian, Hypodorian, Aeolian, Hypoaeolian), but not in Phrygian or Hypophrygian mode. Thus, in the Dorian mode on D, a C is necessary at the cadence. +Permitted melodic intervals are the perfect unison, fourth, fifth, and octave, as well as the major and minor second, major and minor third, and ascending minor sixth. The ascending minor sixth must be immediately followed by motion downwards. +If writing two skips in the same direction—something that must be only rarely done—the second must be smaller than the first, and the interval between the first and the third note may not be dissonant. The three notes should be from the same triad; if this is impossible, they should not outline more than one octave. In general, do not write more than two skips in the same direction. +If writing a skip in one direction, it is best to proceed after the skip with step-wise motion in the other direction. +The interval of a tritone in three notes should be avoided (for example, an ascending melodic motion F–A–B) as is the interval of a seventh in three notes. +There must be a climax or high point in the line countering the cantus firmus. This usually occurs somewhere in the middle of exercise and must occur on a strong beat. +An outlining of a seventh is avoided within a single line moving in the same direction. + +And, in all species, the following rules govern the combination of the parts: + +The counterpoint must begin and end on a perfect consonance. +Contrary motion should dominate. +Perfect consonances must be approached by oblique or contrary motion. +Imperfect consonances may be approached by any type of motion. +The interval of a tenth should not be exceeded between two adjacent parts unless by necessity. +Build from the bass, upward. + +First species +In first species counterpoint, each note in every added part (parts being also referred to as lines or voices) sounds against one note in the cantus firmus. Notes in all parts are sounded simultaneously, and move against each other simultaneously. Since all notes in First species counterpoint are whole notes, rhythmic independence is not available. + +In the present context, a "step" is a melodic interval of a half or whole step. A "skip" is an interval of a third or fourth. (See Steps and skips.) An interval of a fifth or larger is referred to as a "leap". + +A few further rules given by Fux, by study of the Palestrina style, and usually given in the works of later counterpoint pedagogues, are as follows. + +Begin and end on either the unison, octave, or fifth, unless the added part is underneath, in which case begin and end only on unison or octave. +Use no unisons except at the beginning or end. +Avoid parallel fifths or octaves between any two parts; and avoid "hidden" parallel fifths or octaves: that is, movement by similar motion to a perfect fifth or octave, unless one part (sometimes restricted to the higher of the parts) moves by step. +Avoid moving in parallel fourths. (In practice Palestrina and others frequently allowed themselves such progressions, especially if they do not involve the lowest of the parts.) +Do not use an interval more than three times in a row. +Attempt to use up to three parallel thirds or sixths in a row. +Attempt to keep any two adjacent parts within a tenth of each other, unless an exceptionally pleasing line can be written by moving outside that range. +Avoid having any two parts move in the same direction by skip. +Attempt to have as much contrary motion as possible. +Avoid dissonant intervals between any two parts: major or minor second, major or minor seventh, any augmented or diminished interval, and perfect fourth (in many contexts). + +In the adjacent example in two parts, the cantus firmus is the lower part. (The same cantus firmus is used for later examples also. Each is in the Dorian mode.) + +Second species +In second species counterpoint, two notes in each of the added parts work against each longer note in the given part. + +Additional considerations in second species counterpoint are as follows, and are in addition to the considerations for first species: +It is permissible to begin on an upbeat, leaving a half-rest in the added voice. +The accented beat must have only consonance (perfect or imperfect). The unaccented beat may have dissonance, but only as a passing tone, i.e. it must be approached and left by step in the same direction. +Avoid the interval of the unison except at the beginning or end of the example, except that it may occur on the unaccented portion of the bar. +Use caution with successive accented perfect fifths or octaves. They must not be used as part of a sequential pattern. The example shown is weak due to similar motion in the second measure in both voices. A good rule to follow: if one voice skips or jumps try to use step-wise motion in the other voice or at the very least contrary motion. + +Third species + +In third species counterpoint, four (or three, etc.) notes move against each longer note in the given part. + +Three special figures are introduced into third species and later added to fifth species, and ultimately outside the restrictions of species writing. There are three figures to consider: The nota cambiata, double neighbor tones, and double passing tones. + +Double neighbor tones: the figure is prolonged over four beats and allows special dissonances. The upper and lower tones are prepared on beat 1 and resolved on beat 4. The fifth note or downbeat of the next measure should move by step in the same direction as the last two notes of the double neighbor figure. Lastly a double passing tone allows two dissonant passing tones in a row. The figure would consist of 4 notes moving in the same direction by step. The two notes that allow dissonance would be beat 2 and 3 or 3 and 4. The dissonant interval of a fourth would proceed into a diminished fifth and the next note would resolve at the interval of a sixth. + +Fourth species +In fourth species counterpoint, some notes are sustained or suspended in an added part while notes move against them in the given part, often creating a dissonance on the beat, followed by the suspended note then changing (and "catching up") to create a subsequent consonance with the note in the given part as it continues to sound. As before, fourth species counterpoint is called expanded when the added-part notes vary in length among themselves. The technique requires chains of notes sustained across the boundaries determined by beat, and so creates syncopation. Also, it is important to note that a dissonant interval is allowed on beat 1 because of the syncopation created by the suspension. While it is not incorrect to start with a half note, it is also common to start 4th species with a half rest. +Short example of "fourth species" counterpoint + +Fifth species (florid counterpoint) +In fifth species counterpoint, sometimes called florid counterpoint, the other four species of counterpoint are combined within the added parts. In the example, the first and second bars are second species, the third bar is third species, the fourth and fifth bars are third and embellished fourth species, and the final bar is first species. In florid counterpoint it is important that no one species dominates the composition. + +Short example of "Florid" counterpoint + +Contrapuntal derivations +Since the Renaissance period in European music, much contrapuntal music has been written in imitative counterpoint. In imitative counterpoint, two or more voices enter at different times, and (especially when entering) each voice repeats some version of the same melodic element. The fantasia, the ricercar, and later, the canon and fugue (the contrapuntal form par excellence) all feature imitative counterpoint, which also frequently appears in choral works such as motets and madrigals. Imitative counterpoint spawned a number of devices, including: + +Melodic inversion The inverse of a given fragment of melody is the fragment turned upside down—so if the original fragment has a rising major third (see interval), the inverted fragment has a falling major (or perhaps minor) third, etc. (Compare, in twelve-tone technique, the inversion of the tone row, which is the so-called prime series turned upside down.) (Note: in invertible counterpoint, including double and triple counterpoint, the term inversion is used in a different sense altogether. At least one pair of parts is switched, so that the one that was higher becomes lower. See Inversion in counterpoint; it is not a kind of imitation, but a rearrangement of the parts.) +Retrograde Whereby an imitative voice sounds the melody backwards in relation to the leading voice. +Retrograde inversion Where the imitative voice sounds the melody backwards and upside-down at once. +Augmentation When in one of the parts in imitative counterpoint the note values are extended in duration compared to the rate at which they were sounded when introduced. +Diminution When in one of the parts in imitative counterpoint the note values are reduced in duration compared to the rate at which they were sounded when introduced. + +Free counterpoint +Broadly speaking, due to the development of harmony, from the Baroque period on, most contrapuntal compositions were written in the style of free counterpoint. This means that the general focus of the composer had shifted away from how the intervals of added melodies related to a cantus firmus, and more toward how they related to each other. + +Nonetheless, according to Kent Kennan: "....actual teaching in that fashion (free counterpoint) did not become widespread until the late nineteenth century." Young composers of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, such as Mozart, Beethoven, and Schumann, were still educated in the style of "strict" counterpoint, but in practice, they would look for ways to expand on the traditional concepts of the subject. + +Main features of free counterpoint: + All forbidden chords, such as second-inversion, seventh, ninth etc., can be used freely as long as they resolve to a consonant triad + Chromaticism is allowed + The restrictions about rhythmic-placement of dissonance are removed. It is possible to use passing tones on the accented beat + Appoggiatura is available: dissonance tones can be approached by leaps. + +Linear counterpoint + +Linear counterpoint is "a purely horizontal technique in which the integrity of the individual melodic lines is not sacrificed to harmonic considerations. "Its distinctive feature is rather the concept of melody, which served as the starting-point for the adherents of the 'new objectivity' when they set up linear counterpoint as an anti-type to the Romantic harmony." The voice parts move freely, irrespective of the effects their combined motions may create." In other words, either "the domination of the horizontal (linear) aspects over the vertical" is featured or the "harmonic control of lines is rejected." + +Associated with neoclassicism, the technique was first used in Igor Stravinsky's Octet (1923), inspired by J. S. Bach and Giovanni Palestrina. However, according to Knud Jeppesen: "Bach's and Palestrina's points of departure are antipodal. Palestrina starts out from lines and arrives at chords; Bach's music grows out of an ideally harmonic background, against which the voices develop with a bold independence that is often breath-taking." + +According to Cunningham, linear harmony is "a frequent approach in the 20th century...[in which lines] are combined with almost careless abandon in the hopes that new 'chords' and 'progressions'...will result." It is possible with "any kind of line, diatonic or duodecuple". + +Dissonant counterpoint + +Dissonant counterpoint was originally theorized by Charles Seeger as "at first purely a school-room discipline," consisting of species counterpoint but with all the traditional rules reversed. First species counterpoint must be all dissonances, establishing "dissonance, rather than consonance, as the rule," and consonances are "resolved" through a skip, not step. He wrote that "the effect of this discipline" was "one of purification". Other aspects of composition, such as rhythm, could be "dissonated" by applying the same principle. + +Seeger was not the first to employ dissonant counterpoint, but was the first to theorize and promote it. Other composers who have used dissonant counterpoint, if not in the exact manner prescribed by Charles Seeger, include Johanna Beyer, John Cage, Ruth Crawford-Seeger, Vivian Fine, Carl Ruggles, Henry Cowell, Carlos Chávez, John J. Becker, Henry Brant, Lou Harrison, Wallingford Riegger, and Frank Wigglesworth. + +See also + +Counter-melody +Hauptstimme +Polyphony +Polyrhythm +Voice leading + +References + +Sources + +Further reading +Kurth, Ernst (1991). "Foundations of Linear Counterpoint". In Ernst Kurth: Selected Writings, selected and translated by Lee Allen Rothfarb, foreword by Ian Bent, p. 37–95. Cambridge Studies in Music Theory and Analysis 2. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press. Paperback reprint 2006. (cloth); (pbk) + +Prout, Ebenezer (1890). Counterpoint: Strict and Free. London: Augener & Co. +Spalding, Walter Raymond (1904). Tonal Counterpoint: Studies in Part-writing. Boston, New York: A. P. Schmidt. + +External links + +An explanation and teach yourself method for Species Counterpoint +ntoll.org: Species Counterpoint by Nicholas H. Tollervey +Orima: The History of Experimental Music in Northern California: On Dissonant Counterpoint by David Nicholls from his American Experimental Music: 1890–1940 +Virginia Tech Multimedia Music Dictionary: Dissonant counterpoint examples and definition +Counterpointer:Software tutorial for the study of counterpoint by Jeffrey Evans +"Bach as Contrapuntist" by Dan Brown, music critic from Cornell University, from his web book Why Bach? +"contrapuntal—a collaborative arts project by Benjamin Skepper" +Principles of Counterpoint, by Alan Belkin +In chemistry, a cyanide () is a chemical compound that contains a functional group. This group, known as the cyano group, consists of a carbon atom triple-bonded to a nitrogen atom. + +In inorganic cyanides, the cyanide group is present as the cyanide anion . This anion is extremely poisonous. Soluble salts such as sodium cyanide (NaCN) and potassium cyanide (KCN) are highly toxic. Hydrocyanic acid, also known as hydrogen cyanide, or HCN, is a highly volatile liquid that is produced on a large scale industrially. It is obtained by acidification of cyanide salts. + +Organic cyanides are usually called nitriles. In nitriles, the group is linked by a single covalent bond to carbon. For example, in acetonitrile (), the cyanide group is bonded to methyl (). Although nitriles generally do not release cyanide ions, the cyanohydrins do and are thus toxic. + +Bonding +The cyanide ion is isoelectronic with carbon monoxide and with molecular nitrogen N≡N. A triple bond exists between C and N. The negative charge is concentrated on carbon C. + +Occurrence + +In nature + +Cyanides are produced by certain bacteria, fungi, and algae. It is an antifeedant in a number of plants. Cyanides are found in substantial amounts in certain seeds and fruit stones, e.g., those of bitter almonds, apricots, apples, and peaches. Chemical compounds that can release cyanide are known as cyanogenic compounds. In plants, cyanides are usually bound to sugar molecules in the form of cyanogenic glycosides and defend the plant against herbivores. Cassava roots (also called manioc), an important potato-like food grown in tropical countries (and the base from which tapioca is made), also contain cyanogenic glycosides. + +The Madagascar bamboo Cathariostachys madagascariensis produces cyanide as a deterrent to grazing. In response, the golden bamboo lemur, which eats the bamboo, has developed a high tolerance to cyanide. + +The hydrogenase enzymes contain cyanide ligands attached to iron in their active sites. The biosynthesis of cyanide in the NiFe hydrogenases proceeds from carbamoyl phosphate, which converts to cysteinyl thiocyanate, the donor. + +Interstellar medium +The cyanide radical •CN has been identified in interstellar space. Cyanogen, , is used to measure the temperature of interstellar gas clouds. + +Pyrolysis and combustion product +Hydrogen cyanide is produced by the combustion or pyrolysis of certain materials under oxygen-deficient conditions. For example, it can be detected in the exhaust of internal combustion engines and tobacco smoke. Certain plastics, especially those derived from acrylonitrile, release hydrogen cyanide when heated or burnt. + +Organic derivatives + +In IUPAC nomenclature, organic compounds that have a functional group are called nitriles. An example of a nitrile is acetonitrile, . Nitriles usually do not release cyanide ions. A functional group with a hydroxyl and cyanide bonded to the same carbon atom is called cyanohydrin (). Unlike nitriles, cyanohydrins do release poisonous hydrogen cyanide. + +Reactions + +Protonation +Cyanide is basic. The pKa of hydrogen cyanide is 9.21. Thus, addition of acids stronger than hydrogen cyanide to solutions of cyanide salts releases hydrogen cyanide. + +Hydrolysis +Cyanide is unstable in water, but the reaction is slow until about 170 °C. It undergoes hydrolysis to give ammonia and formate, which are far less toxic than cyanide: + +Cyanide hydrolase is an enzyme that catalyzes this reaction. + +Alkylation +Because of the cyanide anion's high nucleophilicity, cyano groups are readily introduced into organic molecules by displacement of a halide group (e.g., the chloride on methyl chloride). In general, organic cyanides are called nitriles. In organic synthesis, cyanide is a C-1 synthon; i.e., it can be used to lengthen a carbon chain by one, while retaining the ability to be functionalized. + +Redox +The cyanide ion is a reductant and is oxidized by strong oxidizing agents such as molecular chlorine (), hypochlorite (), and hydrogen peroxide (). These oxidizers are used to destroy cyanides in effluents from gold mining. + +Metal complexation +The cyanide anion reacts with transition metals to form M-CN bonds. This reaction is the basis of cyanide's toxicity. The high affinities of metals for this anion can be attributed to its negative charge, compactness, and ability to engage in π-bonding. + +Among the most important cyanide coordination compounds are the potassium ferrocyanide and the pigment Prussian blue, which are both essentially nontoxic due to the tight binding of the cyanides to a central iron atom. +Prussian blue was first accidentally made around 1706, by heating substances containing iron and carbon and nitrogen, and other cyanides made subsequently (and named after it). Among its many uses, Prussian blue gives the blue color to blueprints, bluing, and cyanotypes. + +Manufacture + +The principal process used to manufacture cyanides is the Andrussow process in which gaseous hydrogen cyanide is produced from methane and ammonia in the presence of oxygen and a platinum catalyst. + +Sodium cyanide, the precursor to most cyanides, is produced by treating hydrogen cyanide with sodium hydroxide: + +Toxicity + +Many cyanides are highly toxic. The cyanide anion is an inhibitor of the enzyme cytochrome c oxidase (also known as aa3), the fourth complex of the electron transport chain found in the inner membrane of the mitochondria of eukaryotic cells. It attaches to the iron within this protein. The binding of cyanide to this enzyme prevents transport of electrons from cytochrome c to oxygen. As a result, the electron transport chain is disrupted, meaning that the cell can no longer aerobically produce ATP for energy. Tissues that depend highly on aerobic respiration, such as the central nervous system and the heart, are particularly affected. This is an example of histotoxic hypoxia. + +The most hazardous compound is hydrogen cyanide, which is a gas and kills by inhalation. For this reason, an air respirator supplied by an external oxygen source must be worn when working with hydrogen cyanide. Hydrogen cyanide is produced by adding acid to a solution containing a cyanide salt. Alkaline solutions of cyanide are safer to use because they do not evolve hydrogen cyanide gas. Hydrogen cyanide may be produced in the combustion of polyurethanes; for this reason, polyurethanes are not recommended for use in domestic and aircraft furniture. Oral ingestion of a small quantity of solid cyanide or a cyanide solution of as little as 200 mg, or exposure to airborne cyanide of 270 ppm, is sufficient to cause death within minutes. + +Organic nitriles do not readily release cyanide ions, and so have low toxicities. By contrast, compounds such as trimethylsilyl cyanide readily release HCN or the cyanide ion upon contact with water. + +Antidote +Hydroxocobalamin reacts with cyanide to form cyanocobalamin, which can be safely eliminated by the kidneys. This method has the advantage of avoiding the formation of methemoglobin (see below). This antidote kit is sold under the brand name Cyanokit and was approved by the U.S. FDA in 2006. + +An older cyanide antidote kit included administration of three substances: amyl nitrite pearls (administered by inhalation), sodium nitrite, and sodium thiosulfate. The goal of the antidote was to generate a large pool of ferric iron () to compete for cyanide with cytochrome a3 (so that cyanide will bind to the antidote rather than the enzyme). The nitrites oxidize hemoglobin to methemoglobin, which competes with cytochrome oxidase for the cyanide ion. Cyanmethemoglobin is formed and the cytochrome oxidase enzyme is restored. The major mechanism to remove the cyanide from the body is by enzymatic conversion to thiocyanate by the mitochondrial enzyme rhodanese. Thiocyanate is a relatively non-toxic molecule and is excreted by the kidneys. To accelerate this detoxification, sodium thiosulfate is administered to provide a sulfur donor for rhodanese, needed in order to produce thiocyanate. + +Sensitivity +Minimum risk levels (MRLs) may not protect for delayed health effects or health effects acquired following repeated sublethal exposure, such as hypersensitivity, asthma, or bronchitis. MRLs may be revised after sufficient data accumulates. + +Applications + +Mining + +Cyanide is mainly produced for the mining of silver and gold: It helps dissolve these metals allowing separation from the other solids. In the cyanide process, finely ground high-grade ore is mixed with the cyanide (at a ratio of about 1:500 parts NaCN to ore); low-grade ores are stacked into heaps and sprayed with a cyanide solution (at a ratio of about 1:1000 parts NaCN to ore). The precious metals are complexed by the cyanide anions to form soluble derivatives, e.g., (dicyanoargentate(I)) and (dicyanoaurate(I)). Silver is less "noble" than gold and often occurs as the sulfide, in which case redox is not invoked (no is required). Instead, a displacement reaction occurs: +Ag2S + 4 NaCN + H2O -> 2 Na[Ag(CN)2] + NaSH + NaOH +4 Au + 8 NaCN + O2 + 2 H2O -> 4 Na[Au(CN)2] + 4 NaOH +The "pregnant liquor" containing these ions is separated from the solids, which are discarded to a tailing pond or spent heap, the recoverable gold having been removed. The metal is recovered from the "pregnant solution" by reduction with zinc dust or by adsorption onto activated carbon. This process can result in environmental and health problems. A number of environmental disasters have followed the overflow of tailing ponds at gold mines. Cyanide contamination of waterways has resulted in numerous cases of human and aquatic species mortality. + +Aqueous cyanide is hydrolyzed rapidly, especially in sunlight. It can mobilize some heavy metals such as mercury if present. Gold can also be associated with arsenopyrite (FeAsS), which is similar to iron pyrite (fool's gold), wherein half of the sulfur atoms are replaced by arsenic. Gold-containing arsenopyrite ores are similarly reactive toward inorganic cyanide. + +Industrial organic chemistry +The second major application of alkali metal cyanides (after mining) is in the production of CN-containing compounds, usually nitriles. Acyl cyanides are produced from acyl chlorides and cyanide. Cyanogen, cyanogen chloride, and the trimer cyanuric chloride are derived from alkali metal cyanides. + +Medical uses +The cyanide compound sodium nitroprusside is used mainly in clinical chemistry to measure urine ketone bodies mainly as a follow-up to diabetic patients. On occasion, it is used in emergency medical situations to produce a rapid decrease in blood pressure in humans; it is also used as a vasodilator in vascular research. The cobalt in artificial vitamin B12 contains a cyanide ligand as an artifact of the purification process; this must be removed by the body before the vitamin molecule can be activated for biochemical use. During World War I, a copper cyanide compound was briefly used by Japanese physicians for the treatment of tuberculosis and leprosy. + +Illegal fishing and poaching + +Cyanides are illegally used to capture live fish near coral reefs for the aquarium and seafood markets. The practice is controversial, dangerous, and damaging but is driven by the lucrative exotic fish market. + +Poachers in Africa have been known to use cyanide to poison waterholes, to kill elephants for their ivory. + +Pest control +M44 cyanide devices are used in the United States to kill coyotes and other canids. Cyanide is also used for pest control in New Zealand, particularly for possums, an introduced marsupial that threatens the conservation of native species and spreads tuberculosis amongst cattle. Possums can become bait shy but the use of pellets containing the cyanide reduces bait shyness. Cyanide has been known to kill native birds, including the endangered kiwi. Cyanide is also effective for controlling the dama wallaby, another introduced marsupial pest in New Zealand. A licence is required to store, handle and use cyanide in New Zealand. + +Cyanides are used as insecticides for fumigating ships. Cyanide salts are used for killing ants, and have in some places been used as rat poison (the less toxic poison arsenic is more common). + +Niche uses +Potassium ferrocyanide is used to achieve a blue color on cast bronze sculptures during the final finishing stage of the sculpture. On its own, it will produce a very dark shade of blue and is often mixed with other chemicals to achieve the desired tint and hue. It is applied using a torch and paint brush while wearing the standard safety equipment used for any patina application: rubber gloves, safety glasses, and a respirator. The actual amount of cyanide in the mixture varies according to the recipes used by each foundry. + +Cyanide is also used in jewelry-making and certain kinds of photography such as sepia toning. + +Although usually thought to be toxic, cyanide and cyanohydrins increase germination in various plant species. + +Human poisoning + +Deliberate cyanide poisoning of humans has occurred many times throughout history. +Common salts such as sodium cyanide are involatile but water-soluble, so are poisonous by ingestion. Hydrogen cyanide is a gas, making it more indiscriminately dangerous, however it is lighter than air and rapidly disperses up into the atmosphere, which makes it ineffective as a chemical weapon. Poisoning by hydrogen cyanide is more effective in an enclosed space, such as a gas chamber. Most significantly, hydrogen cyanide released from pellets of Zyklon-B was used extensively in the extermination camps of the Holocaust. + +Food additive +Because of the high stability of their complexation with iron, ferrocyanides (Sodium ferrocyanide E535, Potassium ferrocyanide E536, and Calcium ferrocyanide E538) do not decompose to lethal levels in the human body and are used in the food industry as, e.g., an anticaking agent in table salt. + +Chemical tests for cyanide +Cyanide is quantified by potentiometric titration, a method widely used in gold mining. It can also be determined by titration with silver ion. +Some analyses begin with an air-purge of an acidified boiling solution, sweeping the vapors into a basic absorber solution. The cyanide salt absorbed in the basic solution is then analyzed. + +Qualitative tests +Because of the notorious toxicity of cyanide, many methods have been investigated. Benzidine gives a blue coloration in the presence of ferricyanide. Iron(II) sulfate added to a solution of cyanide, such as the filtrate from the sodium fusion test, gives prussian blue. A solution of para-benzoquinone in DMSO reacts with inorganic cyanide to form a cyanophenol, which is fluorescent. Illumination with a UV light gives a green/blue glow if the test is positive. + +References + +External links + +ATSDR medical management guidelines for cyanide poisoning (US) +HSE recommendations for first aid treatment of cyanide poisoning (UK) +Hydrogen cyanide and cyanides (CICAD 61) +IPCS/CEC Evaluation of antidotes for poisoning by cyanides +National Pollutant Inventory – Cyanide compounds fact sheet +Eating apple seeds is safe despite the small amount of cyanide +Toxicological Profile for Cyanide, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, July 2006 + +Safety data (French) + Institut national de recherche et de sécurité (1997). "Cyanure d'hydrogène et solutions aqueuses". Fiche toxicologique n° 4, Paris: INRS, 5 pp. (PDF file, ) + Institut national de recherche et de sécurité (1997). "Cyanure de sodium. Cyanure de potassium". Fiche toxicologique n° 111, Paris: INRS, 6 pp. (PDF file, ) + + +Anions +Blood agents +Nitrogen(−III) compounds +Toxicology +A carbonate is a salt of carbonic acid (H2CO3), characterized by the presence of the carbonate ion, a polyatomic ion with the formula . The word carbonate may also refer to a carbonate ester, an organic compound containing the carbonate group . + +The term is also used as a verb, to describe carbonation: the process of raising the concentrations of carbonate and bicarbonate ions in water to produce carbonated water and other carbonated beverageseither by the addition of carbon dioxide gas under pressure or by dissolving carbonate or bicarbonate salts into the water. + +In geology and mineralogy, the term "carbonate" can refer both to carbonate minerals and carbonate rock (which is made of chiefly carbonate minerals), and both are dominated by the carbonate ion, . Carbonate minerals are extremely varied and ubiquitous in chemically precipitated sedimentary rock. The most common are calcite or calcium carbonate, CaCO3, the chief constituent of limestone (as well as the main component of mollusc shells and coral skeletons); dolomite, a calcium-magnesium carbonate CaMg(CO3)2; and siderite, or iron(II) carbonate, FeCO3, an important iron ore. Sodium carbonate ("soda" or "natron") and potassium carbonate ("potash") have been used since antiquity for cleaning and preservation, as well as for the manufacture of glass. Carbonates are widely used in industry, such as in iron smelting, as a raw material for Portland cement and lime manufacture, in the composition of ceramic glazes, and more. New applications of alkali metal carbonates include: thermal energy storage, catalysis and electrolyte both in fuel cell technology as well as in electrosynthesis of H2O2 in aqueous media. + +Structure and bonding + +The carbonate ion is the simplest oxocarbon anion. It consists of one carbon atom surrounded by three oxygen atoms, in a trigonal planar arrangement, with D3h molecular symmetry. It has a molecular mass of 60.01 g/mol and carries a total formal charge of −2. It is the conjugate base of the hydrogencarbonate (bicarbonate) ion, , which is the conjugate base of , carbonic acid. + +The Lewis structure of the carbonate ion has two (long) single bonds to negative oxygen atoms, and one short double bond to a neutral oxygen atom. + +This structure is incompatible with the observed symmetry of the ion, which implies that the three bonds are the same length and that the three oxygen atoms are equivalent. As in the case of the isoelectronic nitrate ion, the symmetry can be achieved by a resonance among three structures: + +This resonance can be summarized by a model with fractional bonds and delocalized charges: + +Chemical properties +Metal carbonates generally decompose on heating, liberating carbon dioxide from the long term carbon cycle to the short term carbon cycle and leaving behind an oxide of the metal. This process is called calcination, after calx, the Latin name of quicklime or calcium oxide, CaO, which is obtained by roasting limestone in a lime kiln. + +A carbonate salt forms when a positively charged ion, , , or , associates with the negatively charged oxygen atoms of the ion by forming electrostatic attractions with them, forming an ionic compound: + +Most carbonate salts are insoluble in water at standard temperature and pressure, with solubility constants of less than . Exceptions include lithium, sodium, potassium, rubidium, caesium, and ammonium carbonates, as well as many uranium carbonates. + +In aqueous solution, carbonate, bicarbonate, carbon dioxide, and carbonic acid exist together in a dynamic equilibrium. In strongly basic conditions, the carbonate ion predominates, while in weakly basic conditions, the bicarbonate ion is prevalent. In more acid conditions, aqueous carbon dioxide, CO2(aq), is the main form, which, with water, H2O, is in equilibrium with carbonic acidthe equilibrium lies strongly towards carbon dioxide. Thus sodium carbonate is basic, sodium bicarbonate is weakly basic, while carbon dioxide itself is a weak acid. + +Carbonated water is formed by dissolving CO2 in water under pressure. When the partial pressure of CO2 is reduced, for example when a can of soda is opened, the equilibrium for each of the forms of carbonate (carbonate, bicarbonate, carbon dioxide, and carbonic acid) shifts until the concentration of CO2 in the solution is equal to the solubility of CO2 at that temperature and pressure. In living systems an enzyme, carbonic anhydrase, speeds the interconversion of CO2 and carbonic acid. + +Although the carbonate salts of most metals are insoluble in water, the same is not true of the bicarbonate salts. In solution this equilibrium between carbonate, bicarbonate, carbon dioxide and carbonic acid changes constantly to the changing temperature and pressure conditions. In the case of metal ions with insoluble carbonates, such as CaCO3, formation of insoluble compounds results. This is an explanation for the buildup of scale inside pipes caused by hard water. + +Carbonate in the inorganic nomenclature +Systematic additive IUPAC name for carbonate anion is trioxidocarbonate(2−). Similarly, cyanide anion CN− is named nitridocarbonate(1−). However, following the same logic for carbonate(4−) (orthocarbonic acid), by similitude to silicate(4−) (orthosilicic acid), in the systematic additive nomenclature makes no sense as this species has never been identified under normal conditions of temperature and pressure. Orthocarbonic acid is energetically much less stable than orthosilicic acid and cannot exist under normal conditions because of the energetically unfavorable orbital configuration of a single central carbon atom bound to four oxygen atoms. + +Organic carbonates + +In organic chemistry a carbonate can also refer to a functional group within a larger molecule that contains a carbon atom bound to three oxygen atoms, one of which is double bonded. These compounds are also known as organocarbonates or carbonate esters, and have the general formula ROCOOR′, or RR′CO3. Important organocarbonates include dimethyl carbonate, the cyclic compounds ethylene carbonate and propylene carbonate, and the phosgene replacement, triphosgene. + +Buffer +Three reversible reactions control the pH balance of blood and act as a buffer to stabilise it in the range 7.37–7.43: + + + + + +Exhaled CO2(g) depletes CO2(aq), which in turn consumes H2CO3, causing the equilibrium of the first reaction to try to restore the level of carbonic acid by reacting bicarbonate with a hydrogen ion, an example of Le Châtelier's principle. The result is to make the blood more alkaline (raise pH). By the same principle, when the pH is too high, the kidneys excrete bicarbonate () into urine as urea via the urea cycle (or Krebs–Henseleit ornithine cycle). By removing the bicarbonate, more H+ is generated from carbonic acid (H2CO3), which comes from CO2(g) produced by cellular respiration. + +Crucially, a similar buffer operates in the oceans. It is a major factor in climate change and the long-term carbon cycle, due to the large number of marine organisms (especially coral) which are made of calcium carbonate. Increased solubility of carbonate through increased temperatures results in lower production of marine calcite and increased concentration of atmospheric carbon dioxide. This, in turn, increases Earth temperature. The amount of available is on a geological scale and substantial quantities may eventually be redissolved into the sea and released to the atmosphere, increasing CO2 levels even more. + +Carbonate salts + + Carbonate overview: + +Presence outside Earth +It is generally thought that the presence of carbonates in rock is strong evidence for the presence of liquid water. Recent observations of the planetary nebula NGC 6302 show evidence for carbonates in space, where aqueous alteration similar to that on Earth is unlikely. Other minerals have been proposed which would fit the observations. + +Until recently carbonate deposits have not been found on Mars via remote sensing or in situ missions, even though Martian meteorites contain small amounts. Groundwater may have existed at Gusev and Meridiani Planum. + +See also + Cap carbonates + Orthocarbonic acid, , or , a hypothetic unstable molecule + Oxalate + Peroxocarbonate + Sodium percarbonate + +References + +External links + +Carbonate/bicarbonate/carbonic acid equilibrium in water: pH of solutions, buffer capacity, titration and species distribution vs. pH computed with a free spreadsheet + + +Oxyanions +Catalysis () is the increase in rate of a chemical reaction due to an added substance known as a catalyst (). Catalysts are not consumed by the reaction and remain unchanged after it. If the reaction is rapid and the catalyst recycles quickly, very small amounts of catalyst often suffice; mixing, surface area, and temperature are important factors in reaction rate. Catalysts generally react with one or more reactants to form intermediates that subsequently give the final reaction product, in the process of regenerating the catalyst. + +The rate increase occurs because the catalyst allows the reaction to occur by an alternative mechanism which may be much faster than the non-catalyzed mechanism. However the non-catalyzed mechanism does remain possible, so that the total rate (catalyzed plus non-catalyzed) can only increase in the presence of the catalyst and never decrease. + +Catalysis may be classified as either homogeneous, whose components are dispersed in the same phase (usually gaseous or liquid) as the reactant, or heterogeneous, whose components are not in the same phase. Enzymes and other biocatalysts are often considered as a third category. + +Catalysis is ubiquitous in chemical industry of all kinds. Estimates are that 90% of all commercially produced chemical products involve catalysts at some stage in the process of their manufacture. + +The term "catalyst" is derived from Greek , kataluein, meaning "loosen" or "untie". The concept of catalysis was invented by chemist Elizabeth Fulhame, based on her novel work in oxidation-reduction experiments. + +General principles + +Example +An illustrative example is the effect of catalysts to speed the decomposition of hydrogen peroxide into water and oxygen: +2 HO → 2 HO + O +This reaction proceeds because the reaction products are more stable than the starting compound, but this decomposition is so slow that hydrogen peroxide solutions are commercially available. In the presence of a catalyst such as manganese dioxide this reaction proceeds much more rapidly. This effect is readily seen by the effervescence of oxygen. The catalyst is not consumed in the reaction, and may be recovered unchanged and re-used indefinitely. Accordingly, manganese dioxide is said to catalyze this reaction. In living organisms, this reaction is catalyzed by enzymes (proteins that serve as catalysts) such as catalase. + +Units +The SI derived unit for measuring the catalytic activity of a catalyst is the katal, which is quantified in moles per second. The productivity of a catalyst can be described by the turnover number (or TON) and the catalytic activity by the turn over frequency (TOF), which is the TON per time unit. The biochemical equivalent is the enzyme unit. For more information on the efficiency of enzymatic catalysis, see the article on enzymes. + +Catalytic reaction mechanisms + +In general, chemical reactions occur faster in the presence of a catalyst because the catalyst provides an alternative reaction mechanism (reaction pathway) having a lower activation energy than the non-catalyzed mechanism. In catalyzed mechanisms, the catalyst is regenerated. + +As a simple example occurring in the gas phase, the reaction 2 SO2 + O2 → 2 SO3 can be catalyzed by adding nitric oxide. The reaction occurs in two steps: + 2NO + O2 → 2NO2 (rate-determining) + NO2 + SO2 → NO + SO3 (fast) +The NO catalyst is regenerated. The overall rate is the rate of the slow step +v = 2k1[NO]2[O2]. + +An example of heterogeneous catalysis is the reaction of oxygen and hydrogen on the surface of titanium dioxide (TiO, or titania) to produce water. Scanning tunneling microscopy showed that the molecules undergo adsorption and dissociation. The dissociated, surface-bound O and H atoms diffuse together. The intermediate reaction states are: HO, HO, then HO and the reaction product (water molecule dimers), after which the water molecule desorbs from the catalyst surface. + +Reaction energetics + +Catalysts enable pathways that differ from the uncatalyzed reactions. These pathways have lower activation energy. Consequently, more molecular collisions have the energy needed to reach the transition state. Hence, catalysts can enable reactions that would otherwise be blocked or slowed by a kinetic barrier. The catalyst may increase the reaction rate or selectivity, or enable the reaction at lower temperatures. This effect can be illustrated with an energy profile diagram. + +In the catalyzed elementary reaction, catalysts do not change the extent of a reaction: they have no effect on the chemical equilibrium of a reaction. The ratio of the forward and the reverse reaction rates is unaffected (see also thermodynamics). The second law of thermodynamics describes why a catalyst does not change the chemical equilibrium of a reaction. Suppose there was such a catalyst that shifted an equilibrium. Introducing the catalyst to the system would result in a reaction to move to the new equilibrium, producing energy. Production of energy is a necessary result since reactions are spontaneous only if Gibbs free energy is produced, and if there is no energy barrier, there is no need for a catalyst. Then, removing the catalyst would also result in a reaction, producing energy; i.e. the addition and its reverse process, removal, would both produce energy. Thus, a catalyst that could change the equilibrium would be a perpetual motion machine, a contradiction to the laws of thermodynamics. Thus, catalysts do not alter the equilibrium constant. (A catalyst can however change the equilibrium concentrations by reacting in a subsequent step. It is then consumed as the reaction proceeds, and thus it is also a reactant. Illustrative is the base-catalyzed hydrolysis of esters, where the produced carboxylic acid immediately reacts with the base catalyst and thus the reaction equilibrium is shifted towards hydrolysis.) + +The catalyst stabilizes the transition state more than it stabilizes the starting material. It decreases the kinetic barrier by decreasing the difference in energy between starting material and the transition state. It does not change the energy difference between starting materials and products (thermodynamic barrier), or the available energy (this is provided by the environment as heat or light). + +Related concepts +Some so-called catalysts are really precatalysts. Precatalysts convert to catalysts in the reaction. For example, Wilkinson's catalyst RhCl(PPh) loses one triphenylphosphine ligand before entering the true catalytic cycle. Precatalysts are easier to store but are easily activated in situ. Because of this preactivation step, many catalytic reactions involve an induction period. + +In cooperative catalysis, chemical species that improve catalytic activity are called cocatalysts or promoters. + +In tandem catalysis two or more different catalysts are coupled in a one-pot reaction. + +In autocatalysis, the catalyst is a product of the overall reaction, in contrast to all other types of catalysis considered in this article. The simplest example of autocatalysis is a reaction of type A + B → 2 B, in one or in several steps. The overall reaction is just A → B, so that B is a product. But since B is also a reactant, it may be present in the rate equation and affect the reaction rate. As the reaction proceeds, the concentration of B increases and can accelerate the reaction as a catalyst. In effect, the reaction accelerates itself or is autocatalyzed. An example is the hydrolysis of an ester such as aspirin to a carboxylic acid and an alcohol. In the absence of added acid catalysts, the carboxylic acid product catalyzes the hydrolysis. + +A true catalyst can work in tandem with a sacrificial catalyst. The true catalyst is consumed in the elementary reaction and turned into a deactivated form. +The sacrificial catalyst regenerates the true catalyst for another cycle. The sacrificial catalyst is consumed in the reaction, and as such, it is not really a catalyst, but a reagent. For example, osmium tetroxide (OsO4) is a good reagent for dihydroxylation, but it is highly toxic and expensive. In Upjohn dihydroxylation, the sacrificial catalyst N-methylmorpholine N-oxide (NMMO) regenerates OsO4, and only catalytic quantities of OsO4 are needed. + +Classification +Catalysis may be classified as either homogeneous or heterogeneous. A homogeneous catalysis is one whose components are dispersed in the same phase (usually gaseous or liquid) as the reactant's molecules. A heterogeneous catalysis is one where the reaction components are not in the same phase. Enzymes and other biocatalysts are often considered as a third category. Similar mechanistic principles apply to heterogeneous, homogeneous, and biocatalysis. + +Heterogeneous catalysis + +Heterogeneous catalysts act in a different phase than the reactants. Most heterogeneous catalysts are solids that act on substrates in a liquid or gaseous reaction mixture. Important heterogeneous catalysts include zeolites, alumina, higher-order oxides, graphitic carbon, transition metal oxides, metals such as Raney nickel for hydrogenation, and vanadium(V) oxide for oxidation of sulfur dioxide into sulfur trioxide by the contact process. + +Diverse mechanisms for reactions on surfaces are known, depending on how the adsorption takes place (Langmuir-Hinshelwood, Eley-Rideal, and Mars-van Krevelen). The total surface area of a solid has an important effect on the reaction rate. The smaller the catalyst particle size, the larger the surface area for a given mass of particles. + +A heterogeneous catalyst has active sites, which are the atoms or crystal faces where the substrate actually binds. Active sites are atoms but are often described as a facet (edge, surface, step, etc) of a solid. Most of the volume but also most of the surface of a heterogeneous catalyst may be catalytically inactive. Finding out the nature of the active site is technically challenging. + +For example, the catalyst for the Haber process for the synthesis of ammonia from nitrogen and hydrogen is often described as iron. But detailed studies and many optimizations have led to catalysts that are mixtures of iron-potassium-calcium-aluminum-oxide. The reacting gases adsorb onto active sites on the iron particles. Once physically adsorbed, the reagents partially or wholly dissociate and form new bonds. In this way the particularly strong triple bond in nitrogen is broken, which would be extremely uncommon in the gas phase due to its high activation energy. Thus, the activation energy of the overall reaction is lowered, and the rate of reaction increases. Another place where a heterogeneous catalyst is applied is in the oxidation of sulfur dioxide on vanadium(V) oxide for the production of sulfuric acid. Many heterogeneous catalysts are in fact nanomaterials. + +Heterogeneous catalysts are typically "supported," which means that the catalyst is dispersed on a second material that enhances the effectiveness or minimizes its cost. Supports prevent or minimize agglomeration and sintering of small catalyst particles, exposing more surface area, thus catalysts have a higher specific activity (per gram) on support. Sometimes the support is merely a surface on which the catalyst is spread to increase the surface area. More often, the support and the catalyst interact, affecting the catalytic reaction. Supports can also be used in nanoparticle synthesis by providing sites for individual molecules of catalyst to chemically bind. Supports are porous materials with a high surface area, most commonly alumina, zeolites or various kinds of activated carbon. Specialized supports include silicon dioxide, titanium dioxide, calcium carbonate, and barium sulfate. + +Electrocatalysts + +In the context of electrochemistry, specifically in fuel cell engineering, various metal-containing catalysts are used to enhance the rates of the half reactions that comprise the fuel cell. One common type of fuel cell electrocatalyst is based upon nanoparticles of platinum that are supported on slightly larger carbon particles. When in contact with one of the electrodes in a fuel cell, this platinum increases the rate of oxygen reduction either to water or to hydroxide or hydrogen peroxide. + +Homogeneous catalysis + +Homogeneous catalysts function in the same phase as the reactants. Typically homogeneous catalysts are dissolved in a solvent with the substrates. One example of homogeneous catalysis involves the influence of H on the esterification of carboxylic acids, such as the formation of methyl acetate from acetic acid and methanol. High-volume processes requiring a homogeneous catalyst include hydroformylation, hydrosilylation, hydrocyanation. For inorganic chemists, homogeneous catalysis is often synonymous with organometallic catalysts. Many homogeneous catalysts are however not organometallic, illustrated by the use of cobalt salts that catalyze the oxidation of p-xylene to terephthalic acid. + +Organocatalysis + +Whereas transition metals sometimes attract most of the attention in the study of catalysis, small organic molecules without metals can also exhibit catalytic properties, as is apparent from the fact that many enzymes lack transition metals. Typically, organic catalysts require a higher loading (amount of catalyst per unit amount of reactant, expressed in mol% amount of substance) than transition metal(-ion)-based catalysts, but these catalysts are usually commercially available in bulk, helping to lower costs. In the early 2000s, these organocatalysts were considered "new generation" and are competitive to traditional metal(-ion)-containing catalysts. Organocatalysts are supposed to operate akin to metal-free enzymes utilizing, e.g., non-covalent interactions such as hydrogen bonding. The discipline organocatalysis is divided into the application of covalent (e.g., proline, DMAP) and non-covalent (e.g., thiourea organocatalysis) organocatalysts referring to the preferred catalyst-substrate binding and interaction, respectively. The Nobel Prize in Chemistry 2021 was awarded jointly to Benjamin List and David W.C. MacMillan "for the development of asymmetric organocatalysis." + +Photocatalysts + +Photocatalysis is the phenomenon where the catalyst can receive light to generate an excited state that effect redox reactions. Singlet oxygen is usually produced by photocatalysis. Photocatalysts are components of dye-sensitized solar cells. + +Enzymes and biocatalysts + +In biology, enzymes are protein-based catalysts in metabolism and catabolism. Most biocatalysts are enzymes, but other non-protein-based classes of biomolecules also exhibit catalytic properties including ribozymes, and synthetic deoxyribozymes. + +Biocatalysts can be thought of as an intermediate between homogeneous and heterogeneous catalysts, although strictly speaking soluble enzymes are homogeneous catalysts and membrane-bound enzymes are heterogeneous. Several factors affect the activity of enzymes (and other catalysts) including temperature, pH, the concentration of enzymes, substrate, and products. A particularly important reagent in enzymatic reactions is water, which is the product of many bond-forming reactions and a reactant in many bond-breaking processes. + +In biocatalysis, enzymes are employed to prepare many commodity chemicals including high-fructose corn syrup and acrylamide. + +Some monoclonal antibodies whose binding target is a stable molecule that resembles the transition state of a chemical reaction can function as weak catalysts for that chemical reaction by lowering its activation energy. Such catalytic antibodies are sometimes called "abzymes". + +Significance + +Estimates are that 90% of all commercially produced chemical products involve catalysts at some stage in the process of their manufacture. In 2005, catalytic processes generated about $900 billion in products worldwide. Catalysis is so pervasive that subareas are not readily classified. Some areas of particular concentration are surveyed below. + +Energy processing + +Petroleum refining makes intensive use of catalysis for alkylation, catalytic cracking (breaking long-chain hydrocarbons into smaller pieces), naphtha reforming and steam reforming (conversion of hydrocarbons into synthesis gas). Even the exhaust from the burning of fossil fuels is treated via catalysis: Catalytic converters, typically composed of platinum and rhodium, break down some of the more harmful byproducts of automobile exhaust. +2 CO + 2 NO → 2 CO + N + +With regard to synthetic fuels, an old but still important process is the Fischer-Tropsch synthesis of hydrocarbons from synthesis gas, which itself is processed via water-gas shift reactions, catalyzed by iron. The Sabatier reaction produces methane from carbon dioxide and hydrogen. Biodiesel and related biofuels require processing via both inorganic and biocatalysts. + +Fuel cells rely on catalysts for both the anodic and cathodic reactions. + +Catalytic heaters generate flameless heat from a supply of combustible fuel. + +Bulk chemicals + +Some of the largest-scale chemicals are produced via catalytic oxidation, often using oxygen. Examples include nitric acid (from ammonia), sulfuric acid (from sulfur dioxide to sulfur trioxide by the contact process), terephthalic acid from p-xylene, acrylic acid from propylene or propane and acrylonitrile from propane and ammonia. + +The production of ammonia is one of the largest-scale and most energy-intensive processes. In the Haber process nitrogen is combined with hydrogen over an iron oxide catalyst. Methanol is prepared from carbon monoxide or carbon dioxide but using copper-zinc catalysts. + +Bulk polymers derived from ethylene and propylene are often prepared via Ziegler-Natta catalysis. Polyesters, polyamides, and isocyanates are derived via acid-base catalysis. + +Most carbonylation processes require metal catalysts, examples include the Monsanto acetic acid process and hydroformylation. + +Fine chemicals +Many fine chemicals are prepared via catalysis; methods include those of heavy industry as well as more specialized processes that would be prohibitively expensive on a large scale. Examples include the Heck reaction, and Friedel–Crafts reactions. Because most bioactive compounds are chiral, many pharmaceuticals are produced by enantioselective catalysis (catalytic asymmetric synthesis). (R)-1,2-Propandiol, the precursor to the antibacterial levofloxacin, can be synthesized efficiently from hydroxyacetone by using catalysts based on BINAP-ruthenium complexes, in Noyori asymmetric hydrogenation: + +Food processing + +One of the most obvious applications of catalysis is the hydrogenation (reaction with hydrogen gas) of fats using nickel catalyst to produce margarine. Many other foodstuffs are prepared via biocatalysis (see below). + +Environment +Catalysis affects the environment by increasing the efficiency of industrial processes, but catalysis also plays a direct role in the environment. A notable example is the catalytic role of chlorine free radicals in the breakdown of ozone. These radicals are formed by the action of ultraviolet radiation on chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs). +Cl + O → ClO + O +ClO + O → Cl + O + +History + +The term "catalyst", broadly defined as anything that increases the rate of a process, is derived from Greek καταλύειν, meaning "to annul," or "to untie," or "to pick up". The concept of catalysis was invented by chemist Elizabeth Fulhame and described in a 1794 book, based on her novel work in oxidation–reduction reactions. The first chemical reaction in organic chemistry that knowingly used a catalyst was studied in 1811 by Gottlieb Kirchhoff, who discovered the acid-catalyzed conversion of starch to glucose. The term catalysis was later used by Jöns Jakob Berzelius in 1835 to describe reactions that are accelerated by substances that remain unchanged after the reaction. Fulhame, who predated Berzelius, did work with water as opposed to metals in her reduction experiments. Other 18th century chemists who worked in catalysis were Eilhard Mitscherlich who referred to it as contact processes, and Johann Wolfgang Döbereiner who spoke of contact action. He developed Döbereiner's lamp, a lighter based on hydrogen and a platinum sponge, which became a commercial success in the 1820s that lives on today. Humphry Davy discovered the use of platinum in catalysis. In the 1880s, Wilhelm Ostwald at Leipzig University started a systematic investigation into reactions that were catalyzed by the presence of acids and bases, and found that chemical reactions occur at finite rates and that these rates can be used to determine the strengths of acids and bases. For this work, Ostwald was awarded the 1909 Nobel Prize in Chemistry. Vladimir Ipatieff performed some of the earliest industrial scale reactions, including the discovery and commercialization of oligomerization and the development of catalysts for hydrogenation. + +Inhibitors, poisons, and promoters +An added substance that lowers the rate is called a reaction inhibitor if reversible and catalyst poisons if irreversible. Promoters are substances that increase the catalytic activity, even though they are not catalysts by themselves. + +Inhibitors are sometimes referred to as "negative catalysts" since they decrease the reaction rate. However the term inhibitor is preferred since they do not work by introducing a reaction path with higher activation energy; this would not lower the rate since the reaction would continue to occur by the non-catalyzed path. Instead, they act either by deactivating catalysts or by removing reaction intermediates such as free radicals. In heterogeneous catalysis, coking inhibits the catalyst, which becomes covered by polymeric side products. + +The inhibitor may modify selectivity in addition to rate. For instance, in the hydrogenation of alkynes to alkenes, a palladium (Pd) catalyst partly "poisoned" with lead(II) acetate (Pb(CHCO)) can be used. Without the deactivation of the catalyst, the alkene produced would be further hydrogenated to alkane. + +The inhibitor can produce this effect by, e.g., selectively poisoning only certain types of active sites. Another mechanism is the modification of surface geometry. For instance, in hydrogenation operations, large planes of metal surface function as sites of hydrogenolysis catalysis while sites catalyzing hydrogenation of unsaturates are smaller. Thus, a poison that covers the surface randomly will tend to lower the number of uncontaminated large planes but leave proportionally smaller sites free, thus changing the hydrogenation vs. hydrogenolysis selectivity. Many other mechanisms are also possible. + +Promoters can cover up the surface to prevent the production of a mat of coke, or even actively remove such material (e.g., rhenium on platinum in platforming). They can aid the dispersion of the catalytic material or bind to reagents. + +See also + +References + +External links + + Science Aid: Catalysts Page for high school level science + W.A. Herrmann Technische Universität presentation + Alumite Catalyst, Kameyama-Sakurai Laboratory, Japan + Inorganic Chemistry and Catalysis Group, Utrecht University, The Netherlands + Centre for Surface Chemistry and Catalysis + Carbons & Catalysts Group, University of Concepcion, Chile + Center for Enabling New Technologies Through Catalysis, An NSF Center for Chemical Innovation, USA + "Bubbles turn on chemical catalysts", Science News magazine online, April 6, 2009. + + +Chemical kinetics +Articles containing video clips +In geometry, the circumference (from Latin circumferens, meaning "carrying around") is the perimeter of a circle or ellipse. The circumference is the arc length of the circle, as if it were opened up and straightened out to a line segment. More generally, the perimeter is the curve length around any closed figure. +Circumference may also refer to the circle itself, that is, the locus corresponding to the edge of a disk. +The is the circumference, or length, of any one of its great circles. + +Circle +The circumference of a circle is the distance around it, but if, as in many elementary treatments, distance is defined in terms of straight lines, this cannot be used as a definition. Under these circumstances, the circumference of a circle may be defined as the limit of the perimeters of inscribed regular polygons as the number of sides increases without bound. The term circumference is used when measuring physical objects, as well as when considering abstract geometric forms. + +Relationship with +The circumference of a circle is related to one of the most important mathematical constants. This constant, pi, is represented by the Greek letter The first few decimal digits of the numerical value of are 3.141592653589793 ... Pi is defined as the ratio of a circle's circumference to its diameter + +Or, equivalently, as the ratio of the circumference to twice the radius. The above formula can be rearranged to solve for the circumference: + +The ratio of the circle's circumference to its radius is called the circle constant, and is equivalent to . The value is also the amount of radians in one turn. The use of the mathematical constant is ubiquitous in mathematics, engineering, and science. + +In Measurement of a Circle written circa 250 BCE, Archimedes showed that this ratio ( since he did not use the name ) was greater than 3 but less than 3 by calculating the perimeters of an inscribed and a circumscribed regular polygon of 96 sides. This method for approximating was used for centuries, obtaining more accuracy by using polygons of larger and larger number of sides. The last such calculation was performed in 1630 by Christoph Grienberger who used polygons with 1040 sides. + +Ellipse + +Circumference is used by some authors to denote the perimeter of an ellipse. There is no general formula for the circumference of an ellipse in terms of the semi-major and semi-minor axes of the ellipse that uses only elementary functions. However, there are approximate formulas in terms of these parameters. One such approximation, due to Euler (1773), for the canonical ellipse, + +is + +Some lower and upper bounds on the circumference of the canonical ellipse with are: + +Here the upper bound is the circumference of a circumscribed concentric circle passing through the endpoints of the ellipse's major axis, and the lower bound is the perimeter of an inscribed rhombus with vertices at the endpoints of the major and minor axes. + +The circumference of an ellipse can be expressed exactly in terms of the complete elliptic integral of the second kind. More precisely, + +where is the length of the semi-major axis and is the eccentricity + +See also + +References + +External links + + Numericana - Circumference of an ellipse + +Geometric measurement +Circles +Continuum mechanics is a branch of mechanics that deals with the deformation of and transmission of forces through materials modeled as a continuous medium (also called a continuum) rather than as discrete particles. The French mathematician Augustin-Louis Cauchy was the first to formulate such models in the 19th century. + +Continuum mechanics deals with deformable bodies, as opposed to rigid bodies. +A continuum model assumes that the substance of the object completely fills the space it occupies. This ignores the fact that matter is made of atoms, however provides a sufficiently accurate description of matter on length scales much greater than that of inter-atomic distances. The concept of a continuous medium allows for intuitive analysis of bulk matter by using differential equations that describe the behavior of such matter according to physical laws, such as mass conservation, momentum conservation, and energy conservation. Information about the specific material is expressed in constitutive relationships. + +Continuum mechanics treats the physical properties of solids and fluids independently of any particular coordinate system in which they are observed. These properties are represented by tensors, which are mathematical objects with the salient property of being independent of coordinate systems. This permits definition of physical properties at any point in the continuum, according to mathematically convenient continuous functions. The theories of elasticity, plasticity and fluid mechanics are based on the concepts of continuum mechanics. + +Concept of a continuum +The concept of a continuum underlies the mathematical framework for studying large-scale forces and deformations in materials. Although materials are composed of discrete atoms and molecules, separated by empty space or microscopic cracks and crystallographic defects, physical phenomena can often be modeled by considering a substance distributed throughout some region of space. A continuum is a body that can be continually sub-divided into infinitesimal elements with local material properties defined at any particular point. Properties of the bulk material can therefore be described by continuous functions, and their evolution can be studied using the mathematics of calculus. + +Apart from the assumption of continuity, two other independent assumptions are often employed in the study of continuum mechanics. These are homogeneity (assumption of identical properties at all locations) and isotropy (assumption of directionally invariant vector properties). If these auxiliary assumptions are not globally applicable, the material may be segregated into sections where they are applicable in order to simplify the analysis. For more complex cases, one or both of these assumptions can be dropped. In these cases, computational methods are often used to solve the differential equations describing the evolution of material properties. + +Major areas + +An additional area of continuum mechanics comprises elastomeric foams, which exhibit a curious hyperbolic stress-strain relationship. The elastomer is a true continuum, but a homogeneous distribution of voids gives it unusual properties. + +Formulation of models + +Continuum mechanics models begin by assigning a region in three-dimensional Euclidean space to the material body being modeled. The points within this region are called particles or material points. Different configurations or states of the body correspond to different regions in Euclidean space. The region corresponding to the body's configuration at time is labeled . + +A particular particle within the body in a particular configuration is characterized by a position vector + +where are the coordinate vectors in some frame of reference chosen for the problem (See figure 1). This vector can be expressed as a function of the particle position in some reference configuration, for example the configuration at the initial time, so that + +This function needs to have various properties so that the model makes physical sense. needs to be: + continuous in time, so that the body changes in a way which is realistic, + globally invertible at all times, so that the body cannot intersect itself, + orientation-preserving, as transformations which produce mirror reflections are not possible in nature. +For the mathematical formulation of the model, is also assumed to be twice continuously differentiable, so that differential equations describing the motion may be formulated. + +Forces in a continuum + +A solid is a deformable body that possesses shear strength, sc. a solid can support shear forces (forces parallel to the material surface on which they act). Fluids, on the other hand, do not sustain shear forces. + +Following the classical dynamics of Newton and Euler, the motion of a material body is produced by the action of externally applied forces which are assumed to be of two kinds: surface forces and body forces . Thus, the total force applied to a body or to a portion of the body can be expressed as: + +Surface forces + +Surface forces or contact forces, expressed as force per unit area, can act either on the bounding surface of the body, as a result of mechanical contact with other bodies, or on imaginary internal surfaces that bound portions of the body, as a result of the mechanical interaction between the parts of the body to either side of the surface (Euler-Cauchy's stress principle). When a body is acted upon by external contact forces, internal contact forces are then transmitted from point to point inside the body to balance their action, according to Newton's third law of motion of conservation of linear momentum and angular momentum (for continuous bodies these laws are called the Euler's equations of motion). The internal contact forces are related to the body's deformation through constitutive equations. The internal contact forces may be mathematically described by how they relate to the motion of the body, independent of the body's material makeup. + +The distribution of internal contact forces throughout the volume of the body is assumed to be continuous. Therefore, there exists a contact force density or Cauchy traction field that represents this distribution in a particular configuration of the body at a given time . It is not a vector field because it depends not only on the position of a particular material point, but also on the local orientation of the surface element as defined by its normal vector . + +Any differential area with normal vector of a given internal surface area , bounding a portion of the body, experiences a contact force arising from the contact between both portions of the body on each side of , and it is given by + +where is the surface traction, also called stress vector, traction, or traction vector. The stress vector is a frame-indifferent vector (see Euler-Cauchy's stress principle). + +The total contact force on the particular internal surface is then expressed as the sum (surface integral) of the contact forces on all differential surfaces : + +In continuum mechanics a body is considered stress-free if the only forces present are those inter-atomic forces (ionic, metallic, and van der Waals forces) required to hold the body together and to keep its shape in the absence of all external influences, including gravitational attraction. Stresses generated during manufacture of the body to a specific configuration are also excluded when considering stresses in a body. Therefore, the stresses considered in continuum mechanics are only those produced by deformation of the body, sc. only relative changes in stress are considered, not the absolute values of stress. + +Body forces + +Body forces are forces originating from sources outside of the body that act on the volume (or mass) of the body. Saying that body forces are due to outside sources implies that the interaction between different parts of the body (internal forces) are manifested through the contact forces alone. These forces arise from the presence of the body in force fields, e.g. gravitational field (gravitational forces) or electromagnetic field (electromagnetic forces), or from inertial forces when bodies are in motion. As the mass of a continuous body is assumed to be continuously distributed, any force originating from the mass is also continuously distributed. Thus, body forces are specified by vector fields which are assumed to be continuous over the entire volume of the body, i.e. acting on every point in it. Body forces are represented by a body force density (per unit of mass), which is a frame-indifferent vector field. + +In the case of gravitational forces, the intensity of the force depends on, or is proportional to, the mass density of the material, and it is specified in terms of force per unit mass () or per unit volume (). These two specifications are related through the material density by the equation . Similarly, the intensity of electromagnetic forces depends upon the strength (electric charge) of the electromagnetic field. + +The total body force applied to a continuous body is expressed as + +Body forces and contact forces acting on the body lead to corresponding moments of force (torques) relative to a given point. Thus, the total applied torque about the origin is given by + +In certain situations, not commonly considered in the analysis of the mechanical behavior of materials, it becomes necessary to include two other types of forces: these are couple stresses (surface couples, contact torques) and body moments. Couple stresses are moments per unit area applied on a surface. Body moments, or body couples, are moments per unit volume or per unit mass applied to the volume of the body. Both are important in the analysis of stress for a polarized dielectric solid under the action of an electric field, materials where the molecular structure is taken into consideration (e.g. bones), solids under the action of an external magnetic field, and the dislocation theory of metals. + +Materials that exhibit body couples and couple stresses in addition to moments produced exclusively by forces are called polar materials. Non-polar materials are then those materials with only moments of forces. In the classical branches of continuum mechanics the development of the theory of stresses is based on non-polar materials. + +Thus, the sum of all applied forces and torques (with respect to the origin of the coordinate system) in the body can be given by + +Kinematics: motion and deformation + +A change in the configuration of a continuum body results in a displacement. The displacement of a body has two components: a rigid-body displacement and a deformation. A rigid-body displacement consists of a simultaneous translation and rotation of the body without changing its shape or size. Deformation implies the change in shape and/or size of the body from an initial or undeformed configuration to a current or deformed configuration (Figure 2). + +The motion of a continuum body is a continuous time sequence of displacements. Thus, the material body will occupy different configurations at different times so that a particle occupies a series of points in space which describe a path line. + +There is continuity during motion or deformation of a continuum body in the sense that: + The material points forming a closed curve at any instant will always form a closed curve at any subsequent time. + The material points forming a closed surface at any instant will always form a closed surface at any subsequent time and the matter within the closed surface will always remain within. + +It is convenient to identify a reference configuration or initial condition which all subsequent configurations are referenced from. The reference configuration need not be one that the body will ever occupy. Often, the configuration at is considered the reference configuration, . The components of the position vector of a particle, taken with respect to the reference configuration, are called the material or reference coordinates. + +When analyzing the motion or deformation of solids, or the flow of fluids, it is necessary to describe the sequence or evolution of configurations throughout time. One description for motion is made in terms of the material or referential coordinates, called material description or Lagrangian description. + +Lagrangian description +In the Lagrangian description the position and physical properties of the particles are described in terms of the material or referential coordinates and time. In this case the reference configuration is the configuration at . An observer standing in the frame of reference observes the changes in the position and physical properties as the material body moves in space as time progresses. The results obtained are independent of the choice of initial time and reference configuration, . This description is normally used in solid mechanics. + +In the Lagrangian description, the motion of a continuum body is expressed by the mapping function (Figure 2), + +which is a mapping of the initial configuration onto the current configuration , giving a geometrical correspondence between them, i.e. giving the position vector that a particle , with a position vector in the undeformed or reference configuration , will occupy in the current or deformed configuration at time . The components are called the spatial coordinates. + +Physical and kinematic properties , i.e. thermodynamic properties and flow velocity, which describe or characterize features of the material body, are expressed as continuous functions of position and time, i.e. . + +The material derivative of any property of a continuum, which may be a scalar, vector, or tensor, is the time rate of change of that property for a specific group of particles of the moving continuum body. The material derivative is also known as the substantial derivative, or comoving derivative, or convective derivative. It can be thought as the rate at which the property changes when measured by an observer traveling with that group of particles. + +In the Lagrangian description, the material derivative of is simply the partial derivative with respect to time, and the position vector is held constant as it does not change with time. Thus, we have + +The instantaneous position is a property of a particle, and its material derivative is the instantaneous flow velocity of the particle. Therefore, the flow velocity field of the continuum is given by + +Similarly, the acceleration field is given by + +Continuity in the Lagrangian description is expressed by the spatial and temporal continuity of the mapping from the reference configuration to the current configuration of the material points. All physical quantities characterizing the continuum are described this way. In this sense, the function and are single-valued and continuous, with continuous derivatives with respect to space and time to whatever order is required, usually to the second or third. + +Eulerian description +Continuity allows for the inverse of to trace backwards where the particle currently located at was located in the initial or referenced configuration . In this case the description of motion is made in terms of the spatial coordinates, in which case is called the spatial description or Eulerian description, i.e. the current configuration is taken as the reference configuration. + +The Eulerian description, introduced by d'Alembert, focuses on the current configuration , giving attention to what is occurring at a fixed point in space as time progresses, instead of giving attention to individual particles as they move through space and time. This approach is conveniently applied in the study of fluid flow where the kinematic property of greatest interest is the rate at which change is taking place rather than the shape of the body of fluid at a reference time. + +Mathematically, the motion of a continuum using the Eulerian description is expressed by the mapping function + +which provides a tracing of the particle which now occupies the position in the current configuration to its original position in the initial configuration . + +A necessary and sufficient condition for this inverse function to exist is that the determinant of the Jacobian matrix, often referred to simply as the Jacobian, should be different from zero. Thus, + +In the Eulerian description, the physical properties are expressed as + +where the functional form of in the Lagrangian description is not the same as the form of in the Eulerian description. + +The material derivative of , using the chain rule, is then + +The first term on the right-hand side of this equation gives the local rate of change of the property occurring at position . The second term of the right-hand side is the convective rate of change and expresses the contribution of the particle changing position in space (motion). + +Continuity in the Eulerian description is expressed by the spatial and temporal continuity and continuous differentiability of the flow velocity field. All physical quantities are defined this way at each instant of time, in the current configuration, as a function of the vector position . + +Displacement field + +The vector joining the positions of a particle in the undeformed configuration and deformed configuration is called the displacement vector , in the Lagrangian description, or , in the Eulerian description. + +A displacement field is a vector field of all displacement vectors for all particles in the body, which relates the deformed configuration with the undeformed configuration. It is convenient to do the analysis of deformation or motion of a continuum body in terms of the displacement field, In general, the displacement field is expressed in terms of the material coordinates as + +or in terms of the spatial coordinates as + +where are the direction cosines between the material and spatial coordinate systems with unit vectors and , respectively. Thus + +and the relationship between and is then given by + +Knowing that + +then + +It is common to superimpose the coordinate systems for the undeformed and deformed configurations, which results in , and the direction cosines become Kronecker deltas, i.e. + +Thus, we have + +or in terms of the spatial coordinates as + +Governing equations +Continuum mechanics deals with the behavior of materials that can be approximated as continuous for certain length and time scales. The equations that govern the mechanics of such materials include the balance laws for mass, momentum, and energy. Kinematic relations and constitutive equations are needed to complete the system of governing equations. Physical restrictions on the form of the constitutive relations can be applied by requiring that the second law of thermodynamics be satisfied under all conditions. In the continuum mechanics of solids, the second law of thermodynamics is satisfied if the Clausius–Duhem form of the entropy inequality is satisfied. + +The balance laws express the idea that the rate of change of a quantity (mass, momentum, energy) in a volume must arise from three causes: + +the physical quantity itself flows through the surface that bounds the volume, +there is a source of the physical quantity on the surface of the volume, or/and, +there is a source of the physical quantity inside the volume. + +Let be the body (an open subset of Euclidean space) and let be its surface (the boundary of ). + +Let the motion of material points in the body be described by the map + +where is the position of a point in the initial configuration and is the location of the same point in the deformed configuration. + +The deformation gradient is given by + +Balance laws +Let be a physical quantity that is flowing through the body. Let be sources on the surface of the body and let be sources inside the body. Let be the outward unit normal to the surface . Let be the flow velocity of the physical particles that carry the physical quantity that is flowing. Also, let the speed at which the bounding surface is moving be (in the direction ). + +Then, balance laws can be expressed in the general form + +The functions , , and can be scalar valued, vector valued, or tensor valued - depending on the physical quantity that the balance equation deals with. If there are internal boundaries in the body, jump discontinuities also need to be specified in the balance laws. + +If we take the Eulerian point of view, it can be shown that the balance laws of mass, momentum, and energy for a solid can be written as (assuming the source term is zero for the mass and angular momentum equations) + +In the above equations is the mass density (current), is the material time derivative of , is the particle velocity, is the material time derivative of , is the Cauchy stress tensor, is the body force density, is the internal energy per unit mass, is the material time derivative of , is the heat flux vector, and is an energy source per unit mass. The operators used are defined below. + +With respect to the reference configuration (the Lagrangian point of view), the balance laws can be written as + +In the above, is the first Piola-Kirchhoff stress tensor, and is the mass density in the reference configuration. The first Piola-Kirchhoff stress tensor is related to the Cauchy stress tensor by + +We can alternatively define the nominal stress tensor which is the transpose of the first Piola-Kirchhoff stress tensor such that + +Then the balance laws become + +Operators + +The operators in the above equations are defined as + +where is a vector field, is a second-order tensor field, and are the components of an orthonormal basis in the current configuration. Also, + +where is a vector field, is a second-order tensor field, and are the components of an orthonormal basis in the reference configuration. + +The inner product is defined as + +Clausius–Duhem inequality +The Clausius–Duhem inequality can be used to express the second law of thermodynamics for elastic-plastic materials. This inequality is a statement concerning the irreversibility of natural processes, especially when energy dissipation is involved. + +Just like in the balance laws in the previous section, we assume that there is a flux of a quantity, a source of the quantity, and an internal density of the quantity per unit mass. The quantity of interest in this case is the entropy. Thus, we assume that there is an entropy flux, an entropy source, an internal mass density and an internal specific entropy (i.e. entropy per unit mass) in the region of interest. + +Let be such a region and let be its boundary. Then the second law of thermodynamics states that the rate of increase of in this region is greater than or equal to the sum of that supplied to (as a flux or from internal sources) and the change of the internal entropy density due to material flowing in and out of the region. + +Let move with a flow velocity and let particles inside have velocities . Let be the unit outward normal to the surface . Let be the density of matter in the region, be the entropy flux at the surface, and be the entropy source per unit mass. +Then the entropy inequality may be written as + +The scalar entropy flux can be related to the vector flux at the surface by the relation . Under the assumption of incrementally isothermal conditions, we have + +where is the heat flux vector, is an energy source per unit mass, and is the absolute temperature of a material point at at time . + +We then have the Clausius–Duhem inequality in integral form: + +We can show that the entropy inequality may be written in differential form as + +In terms of the Cauchy stress and the internal energy, the Clausius–Duhem inequality may be written as + +Validity + +The validity of the continuum assumption may be verified by a theoretical analysis, in which either some clear periodicity is identified or statistical homogeneity and ergodicity of the microstructure exist. More specifically, the continuum hypothesis hinges on the concepts of a representative elementary volume and separation of scales based on the Hill–Mandel condition. This condition provides a link between an experimentalist's and a theoretician's viewpoint on constitutive equations (linear and nonlinear elastic/inelastic or coupled fields) as well as a way of spatial and statistical averaging of the microstructure. +When the separation of scales does not hold, or when one wants to establish a continuum of a finer resolution than the size of the representative volume element (RVE), a statistical volume element (SVE) is employed, which results in random continuum fields. The latter then provide a micromechanics basis for stochastic finite elements (SFE). The levels of SVE and RVE link continuum mechanics to statistical mechanics. Experimentally, the RVE can only be evaluated when the constitutive response is spatially homogenous. + +Applications + Continuum mechanics + Solid mechanics + Fluid mechanics + Engineering + Civil engineering + Mechanical engineering + Aerospace engineering + Biomedical engineering + Chemical engineering + +See also + + Transport phenomena + Bernoulli's principle + Cauchy elastic material + Configurational mechanics + Curvilinear coordinates + Equation of state + Finite deformation tensors + Finite strain theory + Hyperelastic material + Lagrangian and Eulerian specification of the flow field + Movable cellular automaton + Peridynamics (a non-local continuum theory leading to integral equations) + Stress (physics) + Stress measures + Tensor calculus + Tensor derivative (continuum mechanics) + Theory of elasticity + +Explanatory notes + +References + +Citations + +Works cited + +General references + +External links + + "Objectivity in classical continuum mechanics: Motions, Eulerian and Lagrangian functions; Deformation gradient; Lie derivatives; Velocity-addition formula, Coriolis; Objectivity" by Gilles Leborgne, April 7, 2021: "Part IV Velocity-addition formula and Objectivity" + + +Classical mechanics +Constitutional law is a body of law which defines the role, powers, and structure of different entities within a state, namely, the executive, the parliament or legislature, and the judiciary; as well as the basic rights of citizens and, in federal countries such as the United States and Canada, the relationship between the central government and state, provincial, or territorial governments. + +Not all nation states have codified constitutions, though all such states have a jus commune, or law of the land, that may consist of a variety of imperative and consensual rules. These may include customary law, conventions, statutory law, judge-made law, or international rules and norms. Constitutional law deals with the fundamental principles by which the government exercises its authority. In some instances, these principles grant specific powers to the government, such as the power to tax and spend for the welfare of the population. Other times, constitutional principles act to place limits on what the government can do, such as prohibiting the arrest of an individual without sufficient cause. + +In most nations, such as the United States, India, and Singapore, constitutional law is based on the text of a document ratified at the time the nation came into being. Other constitutions, notably that of the United Kingdom, rely heavily on uncodified rules, as several legislative statutes and constitutional conventions, their status within constitutional law varies, and the terms of conventions are in some cases strongly contested. + +State and legal structure + +Constitutional laws can be considered second order rule making or rules about making rules to exercise power. It governs the relationships between the judiciary, the legislature and the executive with the bodies under its authority. One of the key tasks of constitutions within this context is to indicate hierarchies and relationships of power. For example, in a unitary state, the constitution will vest ultimate authority in one central administration and legislature, and judiciary, though there is often a delegation of power or authority to local or municipal authorities. When a constitution establishes a federal state, it will identify the several levels of government coexisting with exclusive or shared areas of jurisdiction over lawmaking, application and enforcement. Some federal states, most notably the United States, have separate and parallel federal and state judiciaries, with each having its own hierarchy of courts with a supreme court for each state. India, on the other hand, has one judiciary divided into district courts, high courts, and the Supreme Court of India. + +Human rights + +Human rights or civil liberties form a crucial part of a country's constitution and uphold the rights of the individual against the state. Most jurisdictions, like the United States and France, have a codified constitution, with a bill of rights. A recent example is the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union which was intended to be included in the Treaty establishing a Constitution for Europe, that failed to be ratified. Perhaps the most important example is the Universal Declaration of Human Rights under the UN Charter. These are intended to ensure basic political, social and economic standards that a nation state, or intergovernmental body is obliged to provide to its citizens but many do include its governments. Canada is another instance where a codified constitution. with the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, protects human rights for people under the nation's jurisdiction. + +Some countries like the United Kingdom have no entrenched document setting out fundamental rights; in those jurisdictions the constitution is composed of statute, case law and convention. A case named Entick v. Carrington is a constitutional principle deriving from the common law. John Entick's house was searched and ransacked by Sherriff Carrington. Carrington argued that a warrant from a Government minister, the Earl of Halifax was valid authority, even though there was no statutory provision or court order for it. The court, led by Lord Camden stated that, + +The common law and the civil law jurisdictions do not share the same constitutional law underpinnings. Common law nations, such as those in the Commonwealth as well as the United States, derive their legal systems from that of the United Kingdom, and as such place emphasis on judicial precedent, whereby consequential court rulings (especially those by higher courts) are a source of law. Civil law jurisdictions, on the other hand, place less emphasis on judicial review and only the parliament or legislature has the power to effect law. As a result, the structure of the judiciary differs significantly between the two, with common law judiciaries being adversarial and civil law judiciaries being inquisitorial. Common law judicatures consequently separate the judiciary from the prosecution, thereby establishing the courts as completely independent from both the legislature and law enforcement. Human rights law in these countries is as a result, largely built on legal precedent in the courts' interpretation of constitutional law, whereas that of civil law countries is almost exclusively composed of codified law, constitutional or otherwise. + +Legislative procedure + +Another main function of constitutions may be to describe the procedure by which parliaments may legislate. For instance, special majorities may be required to alter the constitution. In bicameral legislatures, there may be a process laid out for second or third readings of bills before a new law can enter into force. Alternatively, there may further be requirements for maximum terms that a government can keep power before holding an election. + +Study of constitutional law + +Constitutional law is a major focus of legal studies and research. For example, most law students in the United States are required to take a class in Constitutional Law during their first year, and several law journals are devoted to the discussion of constitutional issues. + +The rule of law +The doctrine of the rule of law dictates that government must be conducted according to law. This was first established by British legal theorist A. V. Dicey. + +Dicey identified three essential elements of the British Constitution which were indicative of the rule of law: +Absolute supremacy of regular law as opposed to the influence of arbitrary power; +Equality before the law; +The Constitution is a result of the ordinary law of the land. + +Dicey's rule of law formula consists of three classic tenets. The first is that the regular law is supreme over arbitrary and discretionary powers. "[N]o man is punishable ... except for a distinct breach of the law established in the ordinary legal manner before the ordinary courts of the land." + +The second is that all men are to stand equal in the eyes of the law. "...no man is above the law...every man, whatever be his rank or condition, is subject to the ordinary law of the realm and amenable to the jurisdiction of the ordinary tribunals" + +The third is that the general ideas and principles that the constitution supports arise directly from the judgements and precedents issued by the judiciary. "We may say that the constitution is pervaded by the rule of law on the ground that the general principles of the constitution... are with us the result of judicial decisions determining the rights of private persons in particular cases brought before the courts" + +The separation of powers +Separation of powers is often regarded as a second limb functioning alongside the rule of law to curb the powers of the government. In many modern nation states, power is divided and vested into three branches of government: The legislature, the executive, and the judiciary are known as the horizontal separation of powers. The first and the second are harmonised in traditional Westminster system. Vertical separation of powers is decentralisation. + +Election Law +Election law is a subfield of constitutional law. It includes the rules governing the process of elections. These rules enable the translation of the will of the people into functioning democracies. Election law addresses issues who is entitled to vote, voter registration, ballot access, campaign finance and party funding, redistricting, apportionment, electronic voting and voting machines, accessibility of elections, election systems and formulas, vote counting, election disputes, referendums, and issues such as electoral fraud and electoral silence. + +See also + +Constitutionalism +Constitution +Constitutional economics +Constitutional rights +Philosophy of law +Public law +Rechtsstaat +Rule of law + +References + +External links +The Celtic languages ( ) are a group of related languages descended from Proto-Celtic. They form a branch of the Indo-European language family. The term "Celtic" was first used to describe this language group by Edward Lhuyd in 1707, following Paul-Yves Pezron, who made the explicit link between the Celts described by classical writers and the Welsh and Breton languages. + +During the first millennium BC, Celtic languages were spoken across much of Europe and central Anatolia. Today, they are restricted to the northwestern fringe of Europe and a few diaspora communities. There are six living languages: the four continuously living languages Breton, Irish, Scottish Gaelic and Welsh, and the two revived languages Cornish and Manx. All are minority languages in their respective countries, though there are continuing efforts at revitalisation. Welsh is an official language in Wales and Irish is an official language of Ireland and of the European Union. Welsh is the only Celtic language not classified as endangered by UNESCO. The Cornish and Manx languages became extinct in modern times. They have been the object of revivals and now each has several hundred second-language speakers. + +Irish, Manx and Scottish Gaelic form the Goidelic languages, while Welsh, Cornish and Breton are Brittonic. All of these are Insular Celtic languages, since Breton, the only living Celtic language spoken in continental Europe, is descended from the language of settlers from Britain. There are a number of extinct but attested continental Celtic languages, such as Celtiberian, Galatian and Gaulish. Beyond that there is no agreement on the subdivisions of the Celtic language family. They may be divided into P-Celtic and Q-Celtic. + +The Celtic languages have a rich literary tradition. The earliest specimens of written Celtic are Lepontic inscriptions from the 6th century BC in the Alps. Early Continental inscriptions used Italic and Paleohispanic scripts. Between the 4th and 8th centuries, Irish and Pictish were occasionally written in an original script, Ogham, but Latin script came to be used for all Celtic languages. Welsh has had a continuous literary tradition from the 6th century AD. + +Living languages +SIL Ethnologue lists six living Celtic languages, of which four have retained a substantial number of native speakers. These are: the Goidelic languages (Irish and Scottish Gaelic, both descended from Middle Irish) and the Brittonic languages (Welsh and Breton, descended from Common Brittonic). + +The other two, Cornish (Brittonic) and Manx (Goidelic), died out in modern times with their presumed last native speakers in 1777 and 1974 respectively. For both these languages, however, revitalisation movements have led to the adoption of these languages by adults and children and produced some native speakers. + +Taken together, there were roughly one million native speakers of Celtic languages as of the 2000s. In 2010, there were more than 1.4 million speakers of Celtic languages. + +Demographics + +Mixed languages + Beurla Reagaird, Highland travellers' language + Shelta, based largely on Irish and Hiberno-English (some 86,000 speakers in 2009). + +Classification + +Celtic is divided into various branches: + + Lepontic, the oldest attested Celtic language (from the 6th century BC). Anciently spoken in Switzerland and in Northern-Central Italy. Coins with Lepontic inscriptions have been found in Noricum and Gallia Narbonensis. + Celtiberian, also called Eastern or Northeastern Hispano-Celtic, spoken in the ancient Iberian Peninsula, in the eastern part of Old Castile and south of Aragon. Modern provinces: Segovia, Burgos, Soria, Guadalajara, Cuenca, Zaragoza and Teruel. The relationship of Celtiberian with Gallaecian, in northwest Iberia, is uncertain. + Gallaecian, also known as Western or Northwestern Hispano-Celtic, anciently spoken in the northwest of the peninsula (modern Northern Portugal, Galicia, Asturias and Cantabria). + Gaulish languages, including Galatian and possibly Noric. These were once spoken in a wide arc from Belgium to Turkey. They are now all extinct. + Brittonic, spoken in Great Britain and Brittany. Including the living languages Breton, Cornish, and Welsh, and the lost Cumbric and Pictish, though Pictish may be a sister language rather than a daughter of Common Brittonic. Before the arrival of Scotti on the Isle of Man in the 9th century, there may have been a Brittonic language there. The theory of a Brittonic Ivernic language predating Goidelic speech in Ireland has been suggested, but is not widely accepted. + Goidelic, including the extant Irish, Manx, and Scottish Gaelic. + +Continental/Insular Celtic and P/Q-Celtic hypotheses +Scholarly handling of Celtic languages has been contentious owing to scarceness of primary source data. Some scholars (such as Cowgill 1975; McCone 1991, 1992; and Schrijver 1995) posit that the primary distinction is between Continental Celtic and Insular Celtic, arguing that the differences between the Goidelic and Brittonic languages arose after these split off from the Continental Celtic languages. Other scholars (such as Schmidt 1988) make the primary distinction between P-Celtic and Q-Celtic languages based on the replacement of initial Q by initial P in some words. Most of the Gallic and Brittonic languages are P-Celtic, while the Goidelic and Celtiberian languages are Q-Celtic. The P-Celtic languages (also called Gallo-Brittonic) are sometimes seen (for example by Koch 1992) as a central innovating area as opposed to the more conservative peripheral Q-Celtic languages. According to Ranko Matasovic in the introduction to his 2009 Etymological Dictionary of Proto-Celtic : "Celtiberian...is almost certainly an independent branch on the Celtic genealogical tree, one that became separated from the others very early." + +The Breton language is Brittonic, not Gaulish, though there may be some input from the latter, having been introduced from Southwestern regions of Britain in the post-Roman era and having evolved into Breton. + +In the P/Q classification schema, the first language to split off from Proto-Celtic was Gaelic. It has characteristics that some scholars see as archaic, but others see as also being in the Brittonic languages (see Schmidt). In the Insular/Continental classification schema, the split of the former into Gaelic and Brittonic is seen as being late. + +The distinction of Celtic into these four sub-families most likely occurred about 900 BC according to Gray and Atkinson but, because of estimation uncertainty, it could be any time between 1200 and 800 BC. However, they only considered Gaelic and Brythonic. The controversial paper by Forster and Toth included Gaulish and put the break-up much earlier at 3200 BC ± 1500 years. They support the Insular Celtic hypothesis. The early Celts were commonly associated with the archaeological Urnfield culture, the Hallstatt culture, and the La Tène culture, though the earlier assumption of association between language and culture is now considered to be less strong. + +There are legitimate scholarly arguments for both the Insular Celtic hypothesis and the P-/Q-Celtic hypothesis. Proponents of each schema dispute the accuracy and usefulness of the other's categories. However, since the 1970s the division into Insular and Continental Celtic has become the more widely held view (Cowgill 1975; McCone 1991, 1992; Schrijver 1995), but in the middle of the 1980s, the P-/Q-Celtic theory found new supporters (Lambert 1994), because of the inscription on the Larzac piece of lead (1983), the analysis of which reveals another common phonetical innovation -nm- > -nu (Gaelic ainm / Gaulish anuana, Old Welsh enuein "names"), that is less accidental than only one. The discovery of a third common innovation would allow the specialists to come to the conclusion of a Gallo-Brittonic dialect (Schmidt 1986; Fleuriot 1986). + +The interpretation of this and further evidence is still quite contested, and the main argument for Insular Celtic is connected with the development of verbal morphology and the syntax in Irish and British Celtic, which Schumacher regards as convincing, while he considers the P-Celtic/Q-Celtic division unimportant and treats Gallo-Brittonic as an outdated theory. Stifter affirms that the Gallo-Brittonic view is "out of favour" in the scholarly community as of 2008 and the Insular Celtic hypothesis "widely accepted". + +When referring only to the modern Celtic languages, since no Continental Celtic language has living descendants, "Q-Celtic" is equivalent to "Goidelic" and "P-Celtic" is equivalent to "Brittonic". + +How the family tree of the Celtic languages is ordered depends on which hypothesis is used: + +"Insular Celtic hypothesis" + Proto-Celtic + Continental Celtic † + Celtiberian † + Gallaecian † + Gaulish † + Insular Celtic + Brittonic + Goidelic + +"P/Q-Celtic hypothesis" + Proto-Celtic + Q-Celtic + Celtiberian † + Gallaecian † + Goidelic + P-Celtic + Gaulish † + Brittonic + +Eska (2010) +Eska evaluates the evidence as supporting the following tree, based on shared innovations, though it is not always clear that the innovations are not areal features. It seems likely that Celtiberian split off before Cisalpine Celtic, but the evidence for this is not robust. On the other hand, the unity of Gaulish, Goidelic, and Brittonic is reasonably secure. Schumacher (2004, p. 86) had already cautiously considered this grouping to be likely genetic, based, among others, on the shared reformation of the sentence-initial, fully inflecting relative pronoun *i̯os, *i̯ā, *i̯od into an uninflected enclitic particle. Eska sees Cisalpine Gaulish as more akin to Lepontic than to Transalpine Gaulish. + + Celtic + Celtiberian + Gallaecian + Nuclear Celtic? + Cisalpine Celtic: Lepontic → Cisalpine Gaulish† + Transalpine–Goidelic–Brittonic (secure) + Transalpine Gaulish† ("Transalpine Celtic") + Insular Celtic + Goidelic + Brittonic + +Eska considers a division of Transalpine–Goidelic–Brittonic into Transalpine and Insular Celtic to be most probable because of the greater number of innovations in Insular Celtic than in P-Celtic, and because the Insular Celtic languages were probably not in great enough contact for those innovations to spread as part of a sprachbund. However, if they have another explanation (such as an SOV substratum language), then it is possible that P-Celtic is a valid clade, and the top branching would be: + + Transalpine–Goidelic–Brittonic (P-Celtic hypothesis) + Goidelic + Gallo-Brittonic + Transalpine Gaulish ("Transalpine Celtic") + Brittonic + +Italo-Celtic +Within the Indo-European family, the Celtic languages have sometimes been placed with the Italic languages in a common Italo-Celtic subfamily. This hypothesis fell somewhat out of favour after reexamination by American linguist Calvert Watkins in 1966. Irrespectively, some scholars such as Ringe, Warnow and Taylor have argued in favour of an Italo-Celtic grouping in 21st century theses. + +Characteristics +Although there are many differences between the individual Celtic languages, they do show many family resemblances. + + consonant mutations (Insular Celtic only) + inflected prepositions (Insular Celtic only) + two grammatical genders (modern Insular Celtic only; Old Irish and the Continental languages had three genders, although Gaulish may have merged the neuter and masculine in its later forms) + a vigesimal number system (counting by twenties) + Cornish "fifty-six" (literally "sixteen and two twenty") + verb–subject–object (VSO) word order (probably Insular Celtic only) + an interplay between the subjunctive, future, imperfect, and habitual, to the point that some tenses and moods have ousted others + an impersonal or autonomous verb form serving as a passive or intransitive + Welsh "I teach" vs. "is taught, one teaches" + Irish "I teach" vs. "is taught, one teaches" + no infinitives, replaced by a quasi-nominal verb form called the verbal noun or verbnoun + frequent use of vowel mutation as a morphological device, e.g. formation of plurals, verbal stems, etc. + use of preverbal particles to signal either subordination or illocutionary force of the following clause + mutation-distinguished subordinators/relativisers + particles for negation, interrogation, and occasionally for affirmative declarations + pronouns positioned between particles and verbs + lack of simple verb for the imperfective "have" process, with possession conveyed by a composite structure, usually BE + preposition + Cornish "I have a cat", literally "there is a cat to me" + Welsh "I have a cat", literally "a cat is with me" + Irish "I have a cat", literally "there is a cat at me" + use of periphrastic constructions to express verbal tense, voice, or aspectual distinctions + distinction by function of the two versions of BE verbs traditionally labelled substantive (or existential) and copula + bifurcated demonstrative structure + suffixed pronominal supplements, called confirming or supplementary pronouns + use of singulars or special forms of counted nouns, and use of a singulative suffix to make singular forms from plurals, where older singulars have disappeared + +Examples: + + (Literal translation) Do not bother with son the beggar's and not will-bother son the beggar's with-you. + is the genitive of . The the result of affection; the is the lenited form of . + is the second person singular inflected form of the preposition . + The order is verb–subject–object (VSO) in the second half. Compare this to English or French (and possibly Continental Celtic) which are normally subject–verb–object in word order. + + + (Literally) four on fifteen and four twenties + is a mutated form of , which is ("five") plus ("ten"). Likewise, is a mutated form of . + The multiples of ten are . + +Comparison table +The lexical similarity between the different Celtic languages is apparent in their core vocabulary, especially in terms of actual pronunciation. Moreover, the phonetic differences between languages are often the product of regular sound change (i.e. lenition of /b/ into /v/ or Ø). + +The table below has words in the modern languages that were inherited direct from Proto-Celtic, as well as a few old borrowings from Latin that made their way into all the daughter languages. There is often a closer match between Welsh, Breton and Cornish on the one hand and Irish, Scottish Gaelic and Manx on the other. For a fuller list of comparisons, see the Swadesh list for Celtic. + +† Borrowings from Latin. + +Examples +Article 1 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights: +All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood. + +Possible members of the family +Several poorly-documented languages may have been Celtic. + +Ancient Belgian + Camunic is an extinct language spoken in the first millennium BC in the Val Camonica and Valtellina valleys of the Central Alps. It has recently been proposed that it was a Celtic language. + Ivernic + Ligurian, on the Northern Mediterranean Coast straddling the southeast French and northwest Italian coasts, including parts of Tuscany, Elba and Corsica. Xavier Delamarre argues that Ligurian was a Celtic language similar to Gaulish. The Ligurian-Celtic question is also discussed by Barruol (1999). Ancient Ligurian is listed as either Celtic (epigraphic), or Para-Celtic (onomastic). + Lusitanian, spoken in the area between the Douro and Tagus rivers of western Iberia (a region straddling the present border of Portugal and Spain). Known from only five inscriptions and various place names. It is an Indo-European language and some scholars have proposed that it may be a para-Celtic language that evolved alongside Celtic or formed a dialect continuum or sprachbund with Tartessian and Gallaecian. This is tied to a theory of an Iberian origin for the Celtic languages. It is also possible that the Q-Celtic languages alone, including Goidelic, originated in western Iberia (a theory that was first put forward by Edward Lhuyd in 1707) or shared a common linguistic ancestor with Lusitanian. Secondary evidence for this hypothesis has been found in research by biological scientists, who have identified (1) deep-rooted similarities in human DNA found precisely in both the former Lusitania and Ireland, and; (2) the so-called "Lusitanian distribution" of animals and plants unique to western Iberia and Ireland. Both phenomena are now generally thought to have resulted from human emigration from Iberia to Ireland, in the late Paleolithic or early Mesolithic eras. Other scholars see greater linguistic affinities between Lusitanian, proto-Gallo-Italic (particularly with Ligurian) and Old European. Prominent modern linguists such as Ellis Evans, believe Gallaecian-Lusitanian was in fact one same language (not separate languages) of the "P" Celtic variant. + Rhaetic, spoken in central Switzerland, Tyrol in Austria, and the Alpine regions of northeast Italy. Documented by a limited number of short inscriptions (found through Northern Italy and Western Austria) in two variants of the Etruscan alphabet. Its linguistic categorization is not clearly established, and it presents a confusing mixture of what appear to be Etruscan, Indo-European, and uncertain other elements. Howard Hayes Scullard argues that Rhaetian was also a Celtic language. + Tartessian, spoken in the southwest of the Iberia Peninsula (mainly southern Portugal and southwest Spain). Tartessian is known by 95 inscriptions, with the longest having 82 readable signs. John T. Koch argues that Tartessian was also a Celtic language. + +See also + Ogham + Celts + Celts (modern) + A Swadesh list of the modern Celtic languages + Celtic Congress + Celtic League + Continental Celtic languages + Italo-Celtic + Language family + +Notes + +References + + Ball, Martin J. & James Fife (ed.) (1993). The Celtic Languages. London: Routledge. . + Borsley, Robert D. & Ian Roberts (ed.) (1996). The Syntax of the Celtic Languages: A Comparative Perspective. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. . + + Celtic Linguistics, 1700–1850 (2000). London; New York: Routledge. 8 vols comprising 15 texts originally published between 1706 and 1844. + + + + Lewis, Henry & Holger Pedersen (1989). A Concise Comparative Celtic Grammar. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht. . + +Further reading + . + . + +External links + + + Aberdeen University Celtic Department + "Labara: An Introduction to the Celtic Languages", by Meredith Richard + Celts and Celtic Languages (PDF) +Color (American English) or colour (Commonwealth English) is the visual perception based on the electromagnetic spectrum. Though color is not an inherent property of matter, color perception is related to an object's light absorption, reflection, emission spectra and interference. For most humans, colors are perceived in the visible light spectrum with three types of cone cells (trichromacy). Other animals may have a different number of cone cell types or have eyes sensitive to different wavelength, such as bees that can distinguish ultraviolet, and thus have a different color sensitivity range. Animal perception of color originates from different light wavelength or spectral sensitivity in cone cell types, which is then processed by the brain. + +Colors have perceived properties such as hue, colorfulness (saturation) and luminance. Colors can also be additively mixed (commonly used for actual light) or subtractively mixed (commonly used for materials). If the colors are mixed in the right proportions, because of metamerism, they may look the same as a single-wavelength light. For convenience, colors can be organized in a color space, which when being abstracted as a mathematical color model can assign each region of color with a corresponding set of numbers. As such, color spaces are an essential tool for color reproduction in print, photography, computer monitors and television. The most well-known color models are RGB, CMYK, YUV, HSL and HSV. + +Because the perception of color is an important aspect of human life, different colors have been associated with emotions, activity, and nationality. Names of color regions in different cultures can have different, sometimes overlapping areas. In visual arts, color theory is used to govern the use of colors in an aesthetically pleasing and harmonious way. The theory of color includes the color complements; color balance; and classification of primary colors (traditionally red, yellow, blue), secondary colors (traditionally orange, green, purple) and tertiary colors. The study of colors in general is called color science. + +Physical properties + +Electromagnetic radiation is characterized by its wavelength (or frequency) and its intensity. When the wavelength is within the visible spectrum (the range of wavelengths humans can perceive, approximately from 390 nm to 700 nm), it is known as "visible light". + +Most light sources emit light at many different wavelengths; a source's spectrum is a distribution giving its intensity at each wavelength. Although the spectrum of light arriving at the eye from a given direction determines the color sensation in that direction, there are many more possible spectral combinations than color sensations. In fact, one may formally define a color as a class of spectra that give rise to the same color sensation, although such classes would vary widely among different species, and to a lesser extent among individuals within the same species. In each such class, the members are called metamers of the color in question. This effect can be visualized by comparing the light sources' spectral power distributions and the resulting colors. + +Spectral colors + +The familiar colors of the rainbow in the spectrum—named using the Latin word for appearance or apparition by Isaac Newton in 1671—include all those colors that can be produced by visible light of a single wavelength only, the pure spectral or monochromatic colors. The table at right shows approximate frequencies (in terahertz) and wavelengths (in nanometers) for spectral colors in the visible range. Spectral colors have 100% purity, and are fully saturated. A complex mixture of spectral colors can be used to describe any color, which is the definition of a light power spectrum. + +The color table should not be interpreted as a definitive list; the spectral colors form a continuous spectrum, and how it is divided into distinct colors linguistically is a matter of culture and historical contingency. Despite the ubiquitous ROYGBIV mnemonic used to remember the spectral colors in English, the inclusion or exclusion of colors in this table is contentious, with disagreement often focused on indigo and cyan. Even if the subset of color terms is agreed, their wavelength ranges and borders between them may not be. + +The intensity of a spectral color, relative to the context in which it is viewed, may alter its perception considerably according to the Bezold–Brücke shift; for example, a low-intensity orange-yellow is brown, and a low-intensity yellow-green is olive green. + +Color of objects + +The physical color of an object depends on how it absorbs and scatters light. Most objects scatter light to some degree and do not reflect or transmit light specularly like glasses or mirrors. A transparent object allows almost all light to transmit or pass through, thus transparent objects are perceived as colorless. Conversely, an opaque object does not allow light to transmit through and instead absorbing or reflecting the light it receives. Like transparent objects, translucent objects allow light to transmit through, but translucent objects are seen colored because they scatter or absorb certain wavelengths of light via internal scatterance. The absorbed light is often dissipated as heat. + +Color vision + +Development of theories of color vision + +Although Aristotle and other ancient scientists had already written on the nature of light and color vision, it was not until Newton that light was identified as the source of the color sensation. In 1810, Goethe published his comprehensive Theory of Colors in which he provided a rational description of color experience, which 'tells us how it originates, not what it is'. (Schopenhauer) + +In 1801 Thomas Young proposed his trichromatic theory, based on the observation that any color could be matched with a combination of three lights. This theory was later refined by James Clerk Maxwell and Hermann von Helmholtz. As Helmholtz puts it, "the principles of Newton's law of mixture were experimentally confirmed by Maxwell in 1856. Young's theory of color sensations, like so much else that this marvelous investigator achieved in advance of his time, remained unnoticed until Maxwell directed attention to it." + +At the same time as Helmholtz, Ewald Hering developed the opponent process theory of color, noting that color blindness and afterimages typically come in opponent pairs (red-green, blue-orange, yellow-violet, and black-white). Ultimately these two theories were synthesized in 1957 by Hurvich and Jameson, who showed that retinal processing corresponds to the trichromatic theory, while processing at the level of the lateral geniculate nucleus corresponds to the opponent theory. + +In 1931, an international group of experts known as the Commission internationale de l'éclairage (CIE) developed a mathematical color model, which mapped out the space of observable colors and assigned a set of three numbers to each. + +Color in the eye + +The ability of the human eye to distinguish colors is based upon the varying sensitivity of different cells in the retina to light of different wavelengths. Humans are trichromatic—the retina contains three types of color receptor cells, or cones. One type, relatively distinct from the other two, is most responsive to light that is perceived as blue or blue-violet, with wavelengths around 450 nm; cones of this type are sometimes called short-wavelength cones or S cones (or misleadingly, blue cones). The other two types are closely related genetically and chemically: middle-wavelength cones, M cones, or green cones are most sensitive to light perceived as green, with wavelengths around 540 nm, while the long-wavelength cones, L cones, or red cones, are most sensitive to light that is perceived as greenish yellow, with wavelengths around 570 nm. + +Light, no matter how complex its composition of wavelengths, is reduced to three color components by the eye. Each cone type adheres to the principle of univariance, which is that each cone's output is determined by the amount of light that falls on it over all wavelengths. For each location in the visual field, the three types of cones yield three signals based on the extent to which each is stimulated. These amounts of stimulation are sometimes called tristimulus values. + +The response curve as a function of wavelength varies for each type of cone. Because the curves overlap, some tristimulus values do not occur for any incoming light combination. For example, it is not possible to stimulate only the mid-wavelength (so-called "green") cones; the other cones will inevitably be stimulated to some degree at the same time. The set of all possible tristimulus values determines the human color space. It has been estimated that humans can distinguish roughly 10 million different colors. + +The other type of light-sensitive cell in the eye, the rod, has a different response curve. In normal situations, when light is bright enough to strongly stimulate the cones, rods play virtually no role in vision at all. On the other hand, in dim light, the cones are understimulated leaving only the signal from the rods, resulting in a colorless response. (Furthermore, the rods are barely sensitive to light in the "red" range.) In certain conditions of intermediate illumination, the rod response and a weak cone response can together result in color discriminations not accounted for by cone responses alone. These effects, combined, are summarized also in the Kruithof curve, which describes the change of color perception and pleasingness of light as a function of temperature and intensity. + +Color in the brain + +While the mechanisms of color vision at the level of the retina are well-described in terms of tristimulus values, color processing after that point is organized differently. A dominant theory of color vision proposes that color information is transmitted out of the eye by three opponent processes, or opponent channels, each constructed from the raw output of the cones: a red–green channel, a blue–yellow channel, and a black–white "luminance" channel. This theory has been supported by neurobiology, and accounts for the structure of our subjective color experience. Specifically, it explains why humans cannot perceive a "reddish green" or "yellowish blue", and it predicts the color wheel: it is the collection of colors for which at least one of the two color channels measures a value at one of its extremes. + +The exact nature of color perception beyond the processing already described, and indeed the status of color as a feature of the perceived world or rather as a feature of our perception of the world—a type of qualia—is a matter of complex and continuing philosophical dispute. + +Nonstandard color perception + +Color vision deficiency + +A color vision deficiency causes an individual to perceive a smaller gamut of colors than the standard observer with normal color vision. The effect can be mild, having lower "color resolution" (i.e. anomalous trichromacy), moderate, lacking an entire dimension or channel of color (e.g. dichromacy), or complete, lacking all color perception (i.e. monochromacy). Most forms of color blindness derive from one or more of the three classes of cone cells either being missing, having a shifted spectral sensitivity or having lower responsiveness to incoming light. In addition, cerebral achromatopsia is caused by neural anomalies in those parts of the brain where visual processing takes place. + +Some colors that appear distinct to an individual with normal color vision will appear metameric to the color blind. The most common form of color blindness is congenital red–green color blindness, affecting ~8% of males. Individuals with the strongest form of this condition (dichromacy) will experience blue and purple, green and yellow, teal and gray as colors of confusion, i.e. metamers. + +Tetrachromacy + +Outside of humans, which are mostly trichromatic (having three types of cones), most mammals are dichromatic, possessing only two cones. However, outside of mammals, most vertebrate are tetrachromatic, having four types of cones, and includes most, birds, reptiles, amphibians and bony fish. An extra dimension of color vision means these vertebrates can see two distinct colors that a normal human would view as metamers. Some invertebrates, such as the mantis shrimp, have an even higher number of cones (12) that could lead to a richer color gamut than even imaginable by humans. + +The existence of human tetrachromats is a contentious notion. As many as half of all human females have 4 distinct cone classes, which could enable tetrachromacy. +However, a distinction must be made between retinal (or weak) tetrachromats, which express four cone classes in the retina, and functional (or strong) tetrachromats, which are able to make the enhanced color discriminations expected of tetrachromats. In fact, there is only one peer-reviewed report of a functional tetrachromat. It is estimated that while the average person is able to see one million colors, someone with functional tetrachromacy could see a hundred million colors. + +Synesthesia + +In certain forms of synesthesia, perceiving letters and numbers (grapheme–color synesthesia) or hearing sounds (chromesthesia) will evoke a perception of color. Behavioral and functional neuroimaging experiments have demonstrated that these color experiences lead to changes in behavioral tasks and lead to increased activation of brain regions involved in color perception, thus demonstrating their reality, and similarity to real color percepts, albeit evoked through a non-standard route. Synesthesia can occur genetically, with 4% of the population having variants associated with the condition. Synesthesia has also been known to occur with brain damage, drugs, and sensory deprivation. + +The philosopher Pythagoras experienced synesthesia and provided one of the first written accounts of the condition in approximately 550 BCE. He created mathematical equations for musical notes that could form part of a scale, such as an octave. + +Afterimages + +After exposure to strong light in their sensitivity range, photoreceptors of a given type become desensitized. For a few seconds after the light ceases, they will continue to signal less strongly than they otherwise would. Colors observed during that period will appear to lack the color component detected by the desensitized photoreceptors. This effect is responsible for the phenomenon of afterimages, in which the eye may continue to see a bright figure after looking away from it, but in a complementary color. +Afterimage effects have also been used by artists, including Vincent van Gogh. + +Color constancy + +When an artist uses a limited color palette, the human eye tends to compensate by seeing any gray or neutral color as the color which is missing from the color wheel. For example, in a limited palette consisting of red, yellow, black, and white, a mixture of yellow and black will appear as a variety of green, a mixture of red and black will appear as a variety of purple, and pure gray will appear bluish. + +The trichromatic theory is strictly true when the visual system is in a fixed state of adaptation. In reality, the visual system is constantly adapting to changes in the environment and compares the various colors in a scene to reduce the effects of the illumination. If a scene is illuminated with one light, and then with another, as long as the difference between the light sources stays within a reasonable range, the colors in the scene appear relatively constant to us. This was studied by Edwin H. Land in the 1970s and led to his retinex theory of color constancy. + +Both phenomena are readily explained and mathematically modeled with modern theories of chromatic adaptation and color appearance (e.g. CIECAM02, iCAM). There is no need to dismiss the trichromatic theory of vision, but rather it can be enhanced with an understanding of how the visual system adapts to changes in the viewing environment. + +Reproduction + +Color reproduction is the science of creating colors for the human eye that faithfully represent the desired color. It focuses on how to construct a spectrum of wavelengths that will best evoke a certain color in an observer. Most colors are not spectral colors, meaning they are mixtures of various wavelengths of light. However, these non-spectral colors are often described by their dominant wavelength, which identifies the single wavelength of light that produces a sensation most similar to the non-spectral color. Dominant wavelength is roughly akin to hue. + +There are many color perceptions that by definition cannot be pure spectral colors due to desaturation or because they are purples (mixtures of red and violet light, from opposite ends of the spectrum). Some examples of necessarily non-spectral colors are the achromatic colors (black, gray, and white) and colors such as pink, tan, and magenta. + +Two different light spectra that have the same effect on the three color receptors in the human eye will be perceived as the same color. They are metamers of that color. This is exemplified by the white light emitted by fluorescent lamps, which typically has a spectrum of a few narrow bands, while daylight has a continuous spectrum. The human eye cannot tell the difference between such light spectra just by looking into the light source, although the color rendering index of each light source may affect the color of objects illuminated by these metameric light sources. + +Similarly, most human color perceptions can be generated by a mixture of three colors called primaries. This is used to reproduce color scenes in photography, printing, television, and other media. There are a number of methods or color spaces for specifying a color in terms of three particular primary colors. Each method has its advantages and disadvantages depending on the particular application. + +No mixture of colors, however, can produce a response truly identical to that of a spectral color, although one can get close, especially for the longer wavelengths, where the CIE 1931 color space chromaticity diagram has a nearly straight edge. For example, mixing green light (530 nm) and blue light (460 nm) produces cyan light that is slightly desaturated, because response of the red color receptor would be greater to the green and blue light in the mixture than it would be to a pure cyan light at 485 nm that has the same intensity as the mixture of blue and green. + +Because of this, and because the primaries in color printing systems generally are not pure themselves, the colors reproduced are never perfectly saturated spectral colors, and so spectral colors cannot be matched exactly. However, natural scenes rarely contain fully saturated colors, thus such scenes can usually be approximated well by these systems. The range of colors that can be reproduced with a given color reproduction system is called the gamut. The CIE chromaticity diagram can be used to describe the gamut. + +Another problem with color reproduction systems is connected with the initial measurement of color, or colorimetry. The characteristics of the color sensors in measurement devices (e.g. cameras, scanners) are often very far from the characteristics of the receptors in the human eye. + +A color reproduction system "tuned" to a human with normal color vision may give very inaccurate results for other observers, according to color vision deviations to the standard observer. + +The different color response of different devices can be problematic if not properly managed. For color information stored and transferred in digital form, color management techniques, such as those based on ICC profiles, can help to avoid distortions of the reproduced colors. Color management does not circumvent the gamut limitations of particular output devices, but can assist in finding good mapping of input colors into the gamut that can be reproduced. + +Additive coloring + +Additive color is light created by mixing together light of two or more different colors. Red, green, and blue are the additive primary colors normally used in additive color systems such as projectors, televisions, and computer terminals. + +Subtractive coloring + +Subtractive coloring uses dyes, inks, pigments, or filters to absorb some wavelengths of light and not others. The color that a surface displays comes from the parts of the visible spectrum that are not absorbed and therefore remain visible. Without pigments or dye, fabric fibers, paint base and paper are usually made of particles that scatter white light (all colors) well in all directions. When a pigment or ink is added, wavelengths are absorbed or "subtracted" from white light, so light of another color reaches the eye. + +If the light is not a pure white source (the case of nearly all forms of artificial lighting), the resulting spectrum will appear a slightly different color. Red paint, viewed under blue light, may appear black. Red paint is red because it scatters only the red components of the spectrum. If red paint is illuminated by blue light, it will be absorbed by the red paint, creating the appearance of a black object. + +Structural color + +Structural colors are colors caused by interference effects rather than by pigments. Color effects are produced when a material is scored with fine parallel lines, formed of one or more parallel thin layers, or otherwise composed of microstructures on the scale of the color's wavelength. If the microstructures are spaced randomly, light of shorter wavelengths will be scattered preferentially to produce Tyndall effect colors: the blue of the sky (Rayleigh scattering, caused by structures much smaller than the wavelength of light, in this case, air molecules), the luster of opals, and the blue of human irises. If the microstructures are aligned in arrays, for example, the array of pits in a CD, they behave as a diffraction grating: the grating reflects different wavelengths in different directions due to interference phenomena, separating mixed "white" light into light of different wavelengths. If the structure is one or more thin layers then it will reflect some wavelengths and transmit others, depending on the layers' thickness. + +Structural color is studied in the field of thin-film optics. The most ordered or the most changeable structural colors are iridescent. Structural color is responsible for the blues and greens of the feathers of many birds (the blue jay, for example), as well as certain butterfly wings and beetle shells. Variations in the pattern's spacing often give rise to an iridescent effect, as seen in peacock feathers, soap bubbles, films of oil, and mother of pearl, because the reflected color depends upon the viewing angle. Numerous scientists have carried out research in butterfly wings and beetle shells, including Isaac Newton and Robert Hooke. Since 1942, electron micrography has been used, advancing the development of products that exploit structural color, such as "photonic" cosmetics. + +Cultural perspective +Colors, their meanings and associations can play a major role in works of art, including literature. + +Associations +Individual colors have a variety of cultural associations such as national colors (in general described in individual color articles and color symbolism). The field of color psychology attempts to identify the effects of color on human emotion and activity. Chromotherapy is a form of alternative medicine attributed to various Eastern traditions. Colors have different associations in different countries and cultures. + +Different colors have been demonstrated to have effects on cognition. For example, researchers at the University of Linz in Austria demonstrated that the color red significantly decreases cognitive functioning in men. The combination of the colors red and yellow together can induce hunger, which has been capitalized on by a number of chain restaurants. + +Color plays a role in memory development too. A photograph that is in black and white is slightly less memorable than one in color. Studies also show that wearing bright colors makes you more memorable to people you meet. + +Terminology + +Colors vary in several different ways, including hue (shades of red, orange, yellow, green, blue, and violet, etc), saturation, brightness. Some color words are derived from the name of an object of that color, such as "orange" or "salmon", while others are abstract, like "red". + +In the 1969 study Basic Color Terms: Their Universality and Evolution, Brent Berlin and Paul Kay describe a pattern in naming "basic" colors (like "red" but not "red-orange" or "dark red" or "blood red", which are "shades" of red). All languages that have two "basic" color names distinguish dark/cool colors from bright/warm colors. The next colors to be distinguished are usually red and then yellow or green. All languages with six "basic" colors include black, white, red, green, blue, and yellow. The pattern holds up to a set of twelve: black, gray, white, pink, red, orange, yellow, green, blue, purple, brown, and azure (distinct from blue in Russian and Italian, but not English). + +See also + Chromophore + Color analysis + Color in Chinese culture + Color mapping + Complementary colors + Impossible color + International Color Consortium + International Commission on Illumination + Lists of colors (compact version) + Neutral color + Pearlescent coating including Metal effect pigments + Pseudocolor + Primary, secondary and tertiary colors + +References + +External links + + + + + +Image processing +Vision +A computation is any type of arithmetic or non-arithmetic calculation that is well-defined. Common examples of computations are mathematical equations and computer algorithms. + +Mechanical or electronic devices (or, historically, people) that perform computations are known as computers. The study of computation is the field of computability, itself a sub-field of computer science. + +Introduction + +The notion that mathematical statements should be 'well-defined' had been argued by mathematicians since at least the 1600s, but agreement on a suitable definition proved elusive. A candidate definition was proposed independently by several mathematicians in the 1930s. The best-known variant was formalised by the mathematician Alan Turing, who defined a well-defined statement or calculation as any statement that could be expressed in terms of the initialisation parameters of a Turing Machine. Other (mathematically equivalent) definitions include Alonzo Church's lambda-definability, Herbrand-Gödel-Kleene's general recursiveness and Emil Post's 1-definability. + +Today, any formal statement or calculation that exhibits this quality of well-definedness is termed computable, while the statement or calculation itself is referred to as a computation. + +Turing's definition apportioned "well-definedness" to a very large class of mathematical statements, including all well-formed algebraic statements, and all statements written in modern computer programming languages. + +Despite the widespread uptake of this definition, there are some mathematical concepts that have no well-defined characterisation under this definition. This includes the halting problem and the busy beaver game. It remains an open question as to whether there exists a more powerful definition of 'well-defined' that is able to capture both computable and 'non-computable' statements. + +Some examples of mathematical statements that are computable include: + All statements characterised in modern programming languages, including C++, Python, and Java. + All calculations carried by an electronic computer, calculator or abacus. + All calculations carried out on an analytical engine. + All calculations carried out on a Turing Machine. + The majority of mathematical statements and calculations given in maths textbooks. + +Some examples of mathematical statements that are not computable include: + + Calculations or statements which are ill-defined, such that they cannot be unambiguously encoded into a Turing machine: ("Paul loves me twice as much as Joe"). + Problem statements which do appear to be well-defined, but for which it can be proved that no Turing machine exists to solve them (such as the halting problem). + +The Physical process of computation +Computation can be seen as a purely physical process occurring inside a closed physical system called a computer. Turing's 1937 proof, On Computable Numbers, with an Application to the Entscheidungsproblem, demonstrated that there is a formal equivalence between computable statements and particular physical systems, commonly called computers. Examples of such physical systems are: Turing machines, human mathematicians following strict rules, digital computers, mechanical computers, analog computers and others. + +Alternative accounts of computation + +The mapping account +An alternative account of computation is found throughout the works of Hilary Putnam and others. Peter Godfrey-Smith has dubbed this the "simple mapping account." Gualtiero Piccinini's summary of this account states that a physical system can be said to perform a specific computation when there is a mapping between the state of that system and the computation such that the "microphysical states [of the system] mirror the state transitions between the computational states." + +The semantic account +Philosophers such as Jerry Fodor have suggested various accounts of computation with the restriction that semantic content be a necessary condition for computation (that is, what differentiates an arbitrary physical system from a computing system is that the operands of the computation represent something). This notion attempts to prevent the logical abstraction of the mapping account of pancomputationalism, the idea that everything can be said to be computing everything. + +The mechanistic account +Gualtiero Piccinini proposes an account of computation based on mechanical philosophy. It states that physical computing systems are types of mechanisms that, by design, perform physical computation, or the manipulation (by a functional mechanism) of a "medium-independent" vehicle according to a rule. "Medium-independence" requires that the property can be instantiated by multiple realizers and multiple mechanisms, and that the inputs and outputs of the mechanism also be multiply realizable. In short, medium-independence allows for the use of physical variables with properties other than voltage (as in typical digital computers); this is imperative in considering other types of computation, such as that which occurs in the brain or in a quantum computer. A rule, in this sense, provides a mapping among inputs, outputs, and internal states of the physical computing system. + +Mathematical models + +In the theory of computation, a diversity of mathematical models of computation has been developed. +Typical mathematical models of computers are the following: + State models including Turing machine, pushdown automaton, finite state automaton, and PRAM + Functional models including lambda calculus + Logical models including logic programming + Concurrent models including actor model and process calculi +Giunti calls the models studied by computation theory computational systems, and he argues that all of them are mathematical dynamical systems with discrete time and discrete state space. He maintains that a computational system is a complex object which consists of three parts. First, a mathematical dynamical system with discrete time and discrete state space; second, a computational setup , which is made up of a theoretical part , and a real part ; third, an interpretation , which links the dynamical system with the setup . + +See also + Computability Theory + Hypercomputation + Computational problem + Limits of computation + Computationalism + +Notes + +References + +Theoretical computer science +Computability theory +A clown is a person who performs comedy and arts in a state of open-mindedness using physical comedy, typically while wearing distinct makeup or costuming and reversing folkway-norms. Clowns have a varied tradition with significant variations in costume and performance. The most recognisable clowns are those that commonly perform in the circus, characterized by colorful wigs, red noses, and oversized shoes. However, clowns have also played roles in theater and folklore, like the court jesters of the Middle Ages and the jesters and ritual clowns of various indigenous cultures. Their performances can elicit a range of emotions, from humor and laughter to fear and discomfort, reflecting complex societal and psychological dimensions. Through the centuries, clowns have continued to play significant roles in society, evolving alongside changing cultural norms and artistic expressions. + +History +The most ancient clowns have been found in the Fifth Dynasty of Egypt, around 2400 BC. Unlike court jesters, clowns have traditionally served a socio-religious and psychological role, and traditionally the roles of priest and clown have been held by the same persons. +Peter Berger writes, "It seems plausible that folly and fools, like religion and magic, meet some deeply rooted needs in human society." For this reason, clowning is often considered an important part of training as a physical performance discipline, partly because tricky subject matter can be dealt with, but also because it requires a high level of risk and play in the performer. + +In anthropology, the term clown has been extended to comparable jester or fool characters in non-Western cultures. A society in which such clowns have an important position are termed clown societies, and a clown character involved in a religious or ritual capacity is known as a ritual clown. + +A Heyoka is an individual in Lakota and Dakota culture cultures who lives outside the constraints of normal cultural roles, playing the role of a backwards clown by doing everything in reverse. The Heyoka role is sometimes best filled by a Winkte. + +Many native tribes have a history of clowning. The Canadian clowning method developed by Richard Pochinko and furthered by his former apprentice, Sue Morrison, combines European and Native American clowning techniques. In this tradition, masks are made of clay while the creator's eyes are closed. A mask is made for each direction of the medicine wheel. During this process, the clown creates a personal mythology that explores their personal experiences. + +The circus clown tradition developed out of earlier comedic roles in theatre or Varieté shows during the 19th to mid 20th centuries. This recognizable character features outlandish costumes, distinctive makeup, colorful wigs, exaggerated footwear, and colorful clothing, with the style generally being designed to entertain large audiences. + +The first mainstream clown role was portrayed by Joseph Grimaldi (who also created the traditional whiteface make-up design). In the early 1800s, he expanded the role of Clown in the harlequinade that formed part of British pantomimes, notably at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane and the Sadler's Wells and Covent Garden theatres. He became so dominant on the London comic stage that harlequinade Clowns became known as "Joey", and both the nickname and Grimaldi's whiteface make-up design are still used by other clowns. + +The comedy that clowns perform is usually in the role of a fool whose everyday actions and tasks become extraordinary—and for whom the ridiculous, for a short while, becomes ordinary. This style of comedy has a long history in many countries and cultures across the world. Some writers have argued that due to the widespread use of such comedy and its long history it is a need that is part of the human condition. + +The modern clowning school of comedy in the 21st century diverged from white-face clown tradition, with more of an emphasis on personal vulnerability and heightened sexuality. + +Origin +The clown character developed out of the zanni rustic fool characters of the early modern commedia dell'arte, which were themselves directly based on the rustic fool characters of ancient Greek and Roman theatre. Rustic buffoon characters in Classical Greek theater were known as sklêro-paiktês (from paizein: to play (like a child)) or deikeliktas, besides other generic terms for rustic or peasant. In Roman theater, a term for clown was fossor, literally digger; labourer. + +The English word clown was first recorded c. 1560 (as clowne, cloyne) in the generic meaning rustic, boor, peasant. The origin of the word is uncertain, perhaps from a Scandinavian word cognate with clumsy. It is in this sense that Clown is used as the name of fool characters in Shakespeare's Othello and The Winter's Tale. The sense of clown as referring to a professional or habitual fool or jester developed soon after 1600, based on Elizabethan rustic fool characters such as Shakespeare's. + +The harlequinade developed in England in the 17th century, inspired by Arlecchino and the commedia dell'arte. It was here that Clown came into use as the given name of a stock character. Originally a foil for Harlequin's slyness and adroit nature, Clown was a buffoon or bumpkin fool who resembled less a jester than a comical idiot. He was a lower class character dressed in tattered servants' garb. + +The now-classical features of the clown character were developed in the early 1800s by Joseph Grimaldi, who played Clown in Charles Dibdin's 1800 pantomime Peter Wilkins: or Harlequin in the Flying World at Sadler's Wells Theatre, where Grimaldi built the character up into the central figure of the harlequinade. + +Modern circuses + +The circus clown developed in the 19th century. The modern circus derives from Philip Astley's London riding school, which opened in 1768. Astley added a clown to his shows to amuse the spectators between equestrian sequences. American comedian George L. Fox became known for his clown role, directly inspired by Grimaldi, in the 1860s. +Tom Belling senior (1843–1900) developed the red clown or Auguste (Dummer August) character c. 1870, acting as a foil for the more sophisticated white clown. Belling worked for Circus Renz in Vienna. Belling's costume became the template for the modern stock character of circus or children's clown, based on a lower class or hobo character, with red nose, white makeup around the eyes and mouth, and oversized clothes and shoes. The clown character as developed by the late 19th century is reflected in Ruggero Leoncavallo's 1892 opera Pagliacci (Clowns). +Belling's Auguste character was further popularized by Nicolai Poliakoff's Coco in the 1920s to 1930s. + +The English word clown was borrowed, along with the circus clown act, by many other languages, such as French clown, Russian (and other Slavic languages) кло́ун, Greek κλόουν, Danish/Norwegian klovn, Romanian clovn etc. + +Italian retains Pagliaccio, a Commedia dell'arte zanni character, and derivations of the Italian term are found in other Romance languages, such as French Paillasse, Spanish payaso, Catalan/Galician pallasso, Portuguese palhaço, Greek παλιάτσος, Turkish palyaço, German Pajass (via French) Yiddish פּאַיאַץ (payats), Russian пая́ц, Romanian paiață. + +20th-century North America +In the early 20th century, with the disappearance of the rustic simpleton or village idiot character of everyday experience, North American circuses developed characters such as the tramp or hobo. Examples include Marceline Orbes, who performed at the Hippodrome Theater (1905), Charlie Chaplin's The Tramp (1914), and Emmett Kelly's Weary Willie based on hobos of the Depression era. Another influential tramp character was played by Otto Griebling during the 1930s to 1950s. Red Skelton's Dodo the Clown in The Clown (1953), depicts the circus clown as a tragicomic stock character, "a funny man with a drinking problem". + +In the United States, Bozo the Clown was an influential Auguste character since the late 1950s. The Bozo Show premiered in 1960 and appeared nationally on cable television in 1978. McDonald's derived its mascot clown, Ronald McDonald, from the Bozo character in the 1960s. Willard Scott, who had played Bozo during 1959–1962, performed as the mascot in 1963 television spots. The McDonald's trademark application for the character dates to 1967. + +Based on the Bozo template, the US custom of birthday clown, private contractors who offer to perform as clowns at children's parties, developed in the 1960s to 1970s. The strong association of the (Bozo-derived) clown character with children's entertainment as it has developed since the 1960s also gave rise to Clown Care or hospital clowning in children's hospitals by the mid-1980s. Clowns of America International (established 1984) and World Clown Association (established 1987) are associations of semi-professionals and professional performers. + +The shift of the Auguste or red clown character from his role as a foil for the white in circus or pantomime shows to a Bozo-derived standalone character in children's entertainment by the 1980s also gave rise to the evil clown character, with the attraction of clowns for small children being based in their fundamentally threatening or frightening nature. The fear of clowns, particularly circus clowns, has become known by the term "coulrophobia." + +Types + +There are different types of clowns portrayed around the world. They include + + Auguste + Blackface + Buffoon + Harlequin + Jester + Mime artist + Pierrot + Pueblo + Rodeo clown + Tramp + Whiteface + +Circus + +Pierrot and Harlequin + +The classical pairing of the White Clown with Auguste in modern tradition +has a precedent in the pairing of Pierrot and Harlequin in the Commedia dell'arte. +Originally, Harlequin's role was that of a light-hearted, nimble and astute servant, paired with the sterner and melancholic Pierrot. + +In the 18th-century English Harlequinade, Harlequin was now paired with Clown. +As developed by Joseph Grimaldi around 1800, Clown became the mischievous and brutish foil for the more sophisticated Harlequin, who became more of a romantic character. The most influential such pair in Victorian England were the Payne Brothers, active during the 1860s and 1870s. + +White and Auguste + +The white clown, or clown blanc in French, is a sophisticated character, as opposed to the clumsy Auguste. The two types are also distinguished as the sad clown (blanc) and happy clown (Auguste). + +The Auguste face base makeup color is a variation of pink, red, or tan rather than white. Features are exaggerated in size, and are typically red and black in color. The mouth is thickly outlined with white (called the muzzle) as are the eyes. Appropriate to the character, the Auguste can be dressed in either well-fitted garb or a costume that does not fit – oversize or too small, either is appropriate. Bold colors, large prints or patterns, and suspenders often characterize Auguste costumes. + +The Auguste character-type is often an anarchist, a joker, or a fool. He is clever and has much lower status than the whiteface. Classically the whiteface character instructs the Auguste character to perform his bidding. The Auguste has a hard time performing a given task, which leads to funny situations. Sometimes the Auguste plays the role of an anarchist and purposefully has trouble following the whiteface's directions. Sometimes the Auguste is confused or is foolish and makes errors less deliberately. + +The contra-auguste plays the role of the mediator between the white clown and the Auguste character. He has a lower status than the white clown but a higher status than the Auguste. He aspires to be more like the white clown and often mimics everything the white clown does to try to gain approval. If there is a contra-auguste character, he often is instructed by the whiteface to correct the Auguste when he is doing something wrong. + +There are two major types of clowns with whiteface makeup: +The classic white clown is derived from the Pierrot character. His makeup is white, usually with facial features such as eyebrows emphasized in black. He is the more intelligent and sophisticated clown, contrasting with the rude or grotesque Auguste types. Francesco Caroli and Glenn "Frosty" Little are examples of this type. The second type of whiteface is the buffoonish clown of the Bozo type, known as Comedy or Grotesque Whiteface. This type has grotesquely emphasized features, especially a red nose and red mouth, often with partial (mostly red) hair. +In the comedic partnership of Abbott and Costello, Bud Abbot would have been the classic whiteface and Lou Costello the comedy whiteface or Auguste. + +Traditionally, the whiteface clown uses clown white makeup to cover the entire face and neck, leaving none of the underlying natural skin visible. In the European whiteface makeup, the ears are painted red. + +Whiteface makeup was originally designed by Joseph Grimaldi in 1801. He began by painting a white base over his face, neck and chest before adding red triangles on the cheeks, thick eyebrows and large red lips set in a mischievous grin. Grimaldi's design is used by many modern clowns. According to Grimaldi's biographer Andrew McConnell Stott, it was one of the most important theatrical designs of the 1800s. + +America's first great whiteface clown was stage star George "G.L." Fox. Inspired by Grimaldi, Fox popularised the Humpty Dumpty stories throughout the U.S. in the 1860s. + +Scary and Evil + +The scary clown, also known as the evil clown or killer clown, is a subversion of the traditional comic clown character, in which the playful trope is instead depicted in a more disturbing nature through the use of horror elements and dark humor. The character can be seen as playing on the sense of unease felt by those with coulrophobia, the fear of clowns. The modern archetype of the evil clown was popularized by DC Comics character the Joker starting in 1940 and again by Pennywise in Stephen King's novel IT, which introduced the fear of an evil clown to a modern audience. In the novel, the eponymous character is a pan-dimensional monster which feeds mainly on children by luring them in the form of a clown, named "Pennywise", and then assuming the shape of whatever the victim fears the most. + +Character +The character clown adopts an eccentric character of some type, such as a butcher, a baker, a policeman, a housewife or hobo. Prime examples of this type of clown are the circus tramps Otto Griebling and Emmett Kelly. Red Skelton, Harold Lloyd, Buster Keaton, Charlie Chaplin, Rowan Atkinson and Sacha Baron Cohen would all fit the definition of a character clown. + +The character clown makeup is a comic slant on the standard human face. Their makeup starts with a flesh tone base and may make use of anything from glasses, mustaches and beards to freckles, warts, big ears or strange haircuts. + +The most prevalent character clown in the American circus is the hobo, tramp or bum clown. There are subtle differences in the American character clown types. The primary differences among these clown types is attitude. According to American circus expert Hovey Burgess, they are: + The Hobo: Migratory and finds work where he travels. Down on his luck but maintains a positive attitude. + The Tramp: Migratory and does not work where he travels. Down on his luck and depressed about his situation. + The Bum: Non-migratory and non-working. + +Organizations +The World Clown Association is a worldwide organization for clowns, jugglers, magicians, and face painters. It holds an annual convention, mainly in the United States. + +Clowns of America International is a Minnesota-based non-profit clown arts membership organization which aims "to share, educate, and act as a gathering place for serious minded amateurs, semiprofessionals, and professional clowns". + +Clowns International is a British clowning organisation dating back to the 1940s. It is responsible for the Clown Egg Register. + +Terminology + +Roles and skills +In the circus, a clown might perform other circus roles or skills. Clowns may perform such skills as tightrope, juggling, unicycling, Master of Ceremonies, or ride an animal. Clowns may also "sit in" with the orchestra. Other circus performers may also temporarily stand in for a clown and perform their skills in clown costume. + +Frameworks +Frameworks are the general outline of an act that clowns use to help them build out an act. Frameworks can be loose, including only a general beginning and ending to the act, leaving it up to the clown's creativity to fill in the rest, or at the other extreme a fully developed script that allows very little room for creativity. + +Shows are the overall production that a clown is a part of, it may or may not include elements other than clowning, such as in a circus show. In a circus context, clown shows are typically made up of some combination of entrées, side dishes, clown stops, track gags, gags and bits. + +Gags, bits and business + Business – the individual motions the clown uses, often used to express the clown's character. + Gag – very short piece of clown comedy that, when repeated within a bit or routine, may become a running gag. Gags are, loosely, the jokes clowns play on each other. A gag may have a beginning, a middle, and an end – or may not. Gags can also refer to the prop stunts/tricks or the stunts that clowns use, such as a squirting flower. + Bit – the clown's sketch or routine, made up of one or more gags either worked out and timed before going on stage, or impromptu bits composed of familiar improvisational material + +Menu + Entrée — clowning acts lasting 5–10 minutes. Typically made up of various gags and bits, usually within a clowning framework. Entrées almost always end with a blow-off — the comedic ending of a show segment, bit, gag, stunt, or routine. + Side dish — shorter feature act. Side dishes are essentially shorter versions of the entrée, typically lasting 1–3 minutes. Typically made up of various gags and bits, side dishes are usually within a clowning framework. Side dishes almost always end with a blow-off. + +Interludes +Clown Stops or interludes are the brief appearances of clowns in a circus while the props and rigging are changed. These are typically made up of a few gags or several bits. Clown stops will always have a beginning, a middle, and an end to them, invariably culminating in a blow-off. These are also called reprises or run-ins by many, and in today's circus they are an art form in themselves. Originally they were bits of business usually parodying the preceding act. If for instance there had been a tightrope walker the reprise would involve two chairs with a piece of rope between and the clown trying to imitate the artiste by trying to walk between them, with the resulting falls and cascades bringing laughter from the audience. Today, interludes are far more complex, and in many modern shows the clowning is a thread that links the whole show together. + +Prop stunts +Among the more well-known clown stunts are: squirting flower; the too-many-clowns-coming-out-of-a-tiny-car stunt; doing just about anything with a rubber chicken, tripping over one's own feet (or an air pocket or imaginary blemish in the floor), or riding any number of ridiculous vehicles or clown bicycles. Individual prop stunts are generally considered individual bits. + +Gallery + +See also + List of clowns + Bouffon + Clown car + +Notes + +References + +Bibliography + +External links + Quotes by and about Clowns +Collection: "Clowns" from the University of Michigan Museum of Art + +Comedy + +Entertainment occupations +Performing arts +Stock characters +Articles containing video clips +Foster Air Force Base (1941–1945, 1952–1959) is a former United States Air Force facility in Texas, located in Victoria County, approximately east-northeast of Victoria. + +A flying training airfield during World War II, it was part of Tactical Air Command (TAC) during the early years of the Cold War as a tactical fighter and command base. + +The airfield honored Lt. Arthur L. Foster (25 November 1888 – 10 February 1925), a Texas native from Georgetown. A U.S. Army Air Corps instructor, he was killed in a crash at Brooks Field, near San Antonio. Foster's son received his training and commission at the namesake base in 1942. + +World War II + +The airfield was established in the spring of 1941 as an advanced single-engine flying school for fighter pilots. A local funding campaign led by E. J. Dysart the previous spring had raised some $17,000 to locate the base at Victoria on a site as an economic asset. Subsequent government construction cost more than $4 million. Leases were formally approved by the War Department on 4 March, with construction beginning on 14 April by American-Friedman-Bitulithic Associates. + +Victoria Army Airfield was activated on 15 May 1941 by the Gulf Coast Air Corps Training Center. The mission of the new airfield was the training of aviation cadets in the advanced phase of flying training. It was assigned to the Air Corps Advanced Flying School (single engine). In the advanced phase, the cadets flew advanced trainers, fighters and fighter-bombers. Pilot wings were awarded upon graduation and were sent on to group combat training. Graduates were usually graded as flight officers (warrant officers); cadets who graduated at the top of their class were graded as second lieutenants. + +The initial class of cadets arrived in September 1941 and served under Lt. Col. Warren R. Carter, the first commander, with the first graduation in December, five days after Pearl Harbor; WACs began to arrive the following May. Cadets used AT-6 trainers and P-40 fighters to drill in aerial gunnery, though actual practice took place on ranges located on Matagorda Island and Matagorda Peninsula. In addition to these bombing ranges on Matagorda, at least ten auxiliary landing fields and a sub-base (Aloe AAF, built in 1943, southwest of Victoria) was controlled by Foster for emergency landings and aircraft overflow. + +The field was formally dedicated to 1st Lt. Arthur L. Foster on Sunday, 22 February 1942. Seventeen years earlier, he and aviation trainee Maj. Lee O. Wright were killed in the crash of a Curtiss JN-6H, AS-44806, about east of Brooks Field. Foster's widow, Mrs. Ruth Young Foster of San Antonio, unveiled a plaque that read "Dedicated to the memory of Lieut. Arthur Lee Foster, a pioneer in aviation who gave his life teaching others to fly." + +In 1943, the War Department constituted and activated the 77th Flying Training Wing (advanced single-engine) at Foster and assigned it to the AAF Central Flying Training Command. The 77th was a headquarters for advanced training at several bases of AAF Central Flying Training Command. + +Many pilots returning from overseas service were taught to become aerial gunnery instructors at Foster Field. In addition to the pilot training mission, Foster also served as a medical evacuation facility for injured veterans, and there were several housing facilities located on the base. + +On 1 January 1945, the 2539th Army Air Forces Base Unit took control of the ground station administrative functions. As World War II wound down that summer, Foster Field took control of several smaller facilities as they were being closed. On 1 September, the mission at the airfield changed from pilot training to becoming a separation station. Foster Field itself was inactivated on 31 October, being placed in standby status. On 15 November 1945, the facility was completely closed, and the site returned to its pre-war owners, the Buhler and Braman estates. + +United States Air Force +The U.S. Air Force retained a recapture right, which it exercised at Foster and at many other former bases to accommodate the Korean War training surge. In the fall of 1951, the federal government purchased at the site, and Foster Field was reactivated for single-engine jet training. It was designated Foster Air Force Base on 1 September 1952, by Department of the Air Force General Order No. 38, dated 29 August. + +Air Training Command +Foster AFB was assigned to the USAF's Air Training Command (ATC), with the 3580th Pilot Training Wing (basic, single-engine) assigned to the base on 1 May 1952 as the primary training organization and host wing. Students were a combination of cadets and commissioned USAF officer, with the first group of students graduating in March 1953 after three months of duty using T-28 propeller and T-33 jet trainers. + +After the end of combat in Korea, Air Training Command returned various combat crew training responsibilities in front-line combat aircraft to the Strategic Air Command (SAC) and the Tactical Air Command (TAC) in 1954. The command was able to do this because bases like Greenville AFB, South Carolina, and Laredo AFB, Texas, had acquired sufficient facilities to assume their full share of the pilot training load. Various bases were transferred to the combat commands, among these was the transfer of Foster AFB to TAC on 1 July 1954. + +Tactical Air Command + +Foster Air Force Base was designated a permanent military installation on 1 July 1954. Col Frank L. Dunn became the new commander, replacing Col C.D. Sonnkalb. + +Under Tactical Air Command, the 450th Fighter-Bomber Wing, was activated at Foster, on 1 July 1954, replacing and absorbing the assets of the 3580th PTW. Four operational squadrons (720th, 721st, 722d, and 723d) were assigned to the 450th Fighter-Bomber Group, initially being equipped with the North American F-86F Sabre. Its aircraft wore an approximation of the stars and stripes, with seven red and six white stripes on the trailing edge, and three stars in white on the blue forward portion of the fin. They also were designated with a colored, scalloped nose chevron. + +Along with the 450th, a second group, the 322d Fighter-Day Group was assigned to Foster, and attached to the 450th FDW. The 322d consisted of the 450th, 451st, and 452d Fighter-Bomber Squadrons, also flying the F-86F. Its aircraft wore a broad band on the fin with its playing card insignia superimposed. The 450th FBG was an operational unit, while the 322d took over the training mission formerly performed by ATC prior to the transfer of the base to TAC. + +With these two fighter groups assigned to the base, assigned personnel increased to about 6,000. The primary mission of the 450th FBW was to maintain tactical proficiency for combat operations and to prepare for overseas deployments as part of Ninth Air Force. + +In early 1955, the 450th FBW began receiving new North American F-100C/D Super Sabre aircraft, replacing the obsolescent F-86s. The 450th FBW was the first operational Tactical Air Command wing to be equipped with the F-100. With the change of equipment, the wing was redesignated as the 450th Fighter-Day Wing on 8 March 1955, with all its subordinate groups and squadrons also being redesignated. + +On 8 July 1955, Foster AFB became the location of Headquarters, Nineteenth Air Force (19AF), under the command of Maj Gen Henry Viccellio. 19AF had no units or aircraft permanently assigned, with its mission focused on planning and carrying out force protection and rapid response using temporarily attached units deployed to overseas crisis locations. From Foster, Nineteenth AF responded to the 1958 Lebanon crisis, when the United States sent in forces to sustain a pro-Western government after a conflict in Iraq threatened to spill across the border. Also, attached to Nineteenth AF, the 450th FDW carried out the first overseas deployment of a complete tactical force as a unit in a training flight to Europe in 1956. The next year three Foster-based F-100s flew the first TAC single-engine, nonstop, round-trip mission over a great distance when they "attacked" Panama in a training maneuver. + +On 1 July 1958, the 450th was redesignated as the 450th Tactical Fighter Wing (450 TFW) as part of a worldwide USAF renaming of its Fighter-Bomber and Fighter-Day units with a single mission designator. + +Closure +On 28 August 1957, despite the fact that President Dwight D. Eisenhower appropriated funds for new construction at the base, the base was ordered closed by the spring of 1959, with the resident 450th TFW and both groups inactivating. This closure was strictly due to budgetary constraints in the Air Force, however the closing came as a surprise to both Victorians and base commanders. + +Nineteenth Air Force was moved to Seymour Johnson AFB, North Carolina, effective 1 September 1958. The 450th TFW F-100 aircraft were reassigned to the 4th and 36th Tactical Fighter Wings, and all units assigned to Foster were inactivated by mid-December 1958. + +Despite a rigorous "Save Foster" campaign led in Washington by Senators Lyndon B. Johnson and Ralph Yarborough and congressman Clark Thompson, the base closed on 31 December 1958. It was formally inactivated effective 1 January 1959 by Department of the Air Force General Order No. 7, dated 9 February 1959. The 450th was reactivated by SAC in 1963 at Minot AFB, North Dakota, as the 450th Bombardment Wing (450 BW) a B-52H strategic bombardment wing to replace the 4136th Strategic Wing. + +Previous names + Established as Victoria Army Airfield on 15 May 1941 + Foster Field, 15 January 1942 – 31 October 1945 + Foster Air Force Base, 1 May 1952 – 1 January 1959 + +Major commands to which assigned + Gulf Coast Air Corps Training Center, 15 May 1941 + Air Corps Flying Training Command (later Army Air Forces Flying Training Command, Army Air Forces Training Command), 23 January 1942 – 31 October 1945 + Air Training Command, 1 May 1952 + Tactical Air Command, 1 July 1954 – 1 January 1959 + +Major units assigned + Air Corps Advanced Flying School (Single Engine) (later Army Air Forces Advanced Flying School, Army Air Forces Pilot School, Advanced (Single Engine), Army Air Forces Fighter Gunnery School), 15 May 1941 – 31 October 1945 + 75th Air Base Group, 4 September 1941 – June 1942 + 84th Air Base Group, 15 August 1941 – ca. August 1942 + 65th Air Base Squadron (later 65th Base Headquarters and Air Base Squadron), 4 September 1941 – 30 April 1944 + 77th Flying Training Wing (Advanced Single Engine), 25 August 1943 – February 1945 + 62d Single Engine Flying Training Group (originally 97th School Squadron), 4 September 1941 – 30 April 1944 + 63d Single Engine Flying Training Group (originally 48th School Squadron), 4 September 1941 – 22 March 1944 + 2505th AAF Base Unit (77th Flying Training Wing), 1 May 1944 – February 1945 + 2539th AAF Base Unit (Pilot School, Advanced, Single Engine) (later 2539th AAFBU (Fighter Gunnery School), 2539th AAFBU (Standby)), 1 May 1944 – 15 November 1945 + 3580th Pilot Training Wing (Basic, Single-Engine), 1 May 1952 – 1 July 1954 + 3580th Pilot Training Group (Basic, Single-Engine), 1 May 1952 – 1 July 1954 + 3580th Air Base Group, 1 May 1952 – 1 July 1954 + 3580th Maintenance & Supply Group, 1 May 1952 – 1 July 1954 + 450th Fighter-Bomber Wing (later 450th Fighter-Day Wing, 450th Tactical Fighter Wing), 1 July 1954 – 18 December 1958 + 450th Fighter-Bomber Group (later 450th Fighter-Day Group), 1 July 1954 – 11 December 1957 + 450th Air Base Group, 1 July 1954 – 1 January 1959 + 450th Maintenance & Supply Group, 1 July 1954 – 11 December 1957 + 322d Fighter-Day Group, 1 July 1954 – 18 November 1957 + Nineteenth Air Force, 8 July 1955 – 1 September 1958 + 10th Communications Group, 8 October 1956 – 15 October 1957 + 512th Tactical Control Group (later 512th Command and Control Group), 8 October 1956 – 15 July 1958 + +Major aircraft assigned + AT-6 Texan, 1941–1945 + P-40 Warhawk, 1941–1945 + F-86 Sabre, 1954–1955 + F-100 Super Sabre, 1955–1958 + +Post military use +The local economy suffered greatly from the closure of Foster AFB. In the summer of 1960, the General Services Administration approved the exchange of Aloe Army Airfield for Foster Field, and Victoria County Airport was moved to the latter site. The growth of the county airport slowly replaced the loss of Foster AFB as numerous businesses located there. + +Two of the largest businesses to locate at Victoria County Airport were the Devereux Foundation, a therapeutic-education center, and Gary Aircraft, which repaired surplus C-54 Skymaster (Douglas DC-4) aircraft in 1968. In 1976 Foster became the site of Victoria Regional Airport, which provides passenger service and connections with major carriers. + +The Victoria Composite Squadron of the Civil Air Patrol's Texas Wing continues to meet at the location. + +See also + + Texas World War II Army Airfields + 77th Flying Training Wing (World War II) + +Notes + +References + +Bibliography + + Manning, Thomas A. (2005), History of Air Education and Training Command, 1942–2002. Office of History and Research, Headquarters, AETC, Randolph AFB, Texas + Shaw, Frederick J. (2004), Locating Air Force Base Sites, History’s Legacy, Air Force History and Museums Program, United States Air Force, Washington DC. + +Installations of the United States Air Force in Texas +Buildings and structures in Victoria County, Texas +1941 establishments in Texas +Military installations closed in 1959 +1945 disestablishments in Texas +1952 establishments in Texas +1959 disestablishments in Texas +Palavela, formerly known as Palazzo delle Mostre and Palazzo a Vela is an indoor arena that is located in Turin, Italy, on the bank of the River Po. It was designed by engineer Franco Levi and architects Annibale and Giorgio Rigotti. The arena is 130 metres in diameter. It has a seating capacity for a maximum 12,200 people, and 9,200 when configured for basketball games. + +The Palavela was featured in the 1969 film The Italian Job. In a famous scene in the film, three Minis are seen driving onto and over the arena's distinctive roof. + +History + +Palavela was originally built for the Italia '61 Expo, and was renovated for the figure skating and short track speed skating events at the 2006 Winter Olympics. As part of the renovation, a new seating system was installed at the arena. The cost of the renovation was 55,000,000 euros. + +It also hosted some events of the XXIII Winter Universiade in 2007. In 2008, the Palavela hosted the 24th European Rhythmic Gymnastics. It hosted the 2010 World Figure Skating Championships in March 2010. + +The arena also hosted the 2008 ULEB Cup Final Eight, and also the same event, under the competition's new name of EuroCup, in the 2008–09 season. + +Events held + 2005 European Figure Skating Championships + 2006 Winter Olympics (Figure Skating and Short Track Speed Skating) + 2007 Winter Universiade (Figure Skating and Short Track Speed Skating) + 2007–2008 Grand Prix of Figure Skating Final + 2008 Rhythmic Gymnastics European Championships + 2010 World Figure Skating Championships + 2017 European Short Track Speed Skating Championships + 2019 Grand Prix Figure Skating Final + 2022 Grand Prix Figure Skating Final + +See also + List of indoor arenas in Italy + +References + +External links + + + +Venues of the 2006 Winter Olympics +Basketball venues in Italy +Indoor arenas in Italy +Olympic figure skating venues +Olympic short track speed skating venues +"Mad About the Boy" is a popular song with words and music by actor and playwright Noël Coward. It was introduced in the 1932 revue Words and Music by Joyce Barbour, Steffi Duna, Norah Howard and Doris Hare. The song deals with the theme of unrequited love for a film star. It was written to be sung by female characters, although Coward (who was a gay man) also wrote a version which was never performed, containing references to the then-risqué topic of homosexual love. The song gained new popularity in 1992 when Dinah Washington's rendition was used in the Levi's television advertisement "Swimmer", directed by Tarsem Singh. + +Lyrics +The song expresses the adulation of a matinee idol by a number of women as they queue outside a cinema and is sung by several female characters in turn. The adoring fans sing of their love for their hero: + +Coward later wrote additional verses for the New York production, to be sung by a male character. The lyrics make explicit reference to homosexual feelings with lines such as: + +The lyrics also make camp humorous reference to the supposed effeminacy of the character, who is likened to the contemporary film actress Myrna Loy, and to his repeated unsuccessful attempts at conversion therapy with his psychiatrist. The verses were never performed, as the management thought them too risqué. + +"The boy" was rumoured to be actor Douglas Fairbanks Jr, who, according to an American newspaper years later, "Noel loved...[but] Doug definitely didn't love him back, although the two men became good friends." Another Hollywood star, Tyrone Power, has also been the rumoured subject of the song. + +Dinah Washington version + +Dinah Washington recorded the song twice: firstly, on 24 March 1952 with orchestral accompaniment by Walter Roddell, and then on 4 December 1961 with Quincy Jones and his orchestra. Her 1961 recording is possibly the most widely known version of the song. The time arrangement for voice and jazz orchestra by Jones omits two verses and was recorded in the singer's native Chicago on the Mercury label. + +Her 1952 version was released as a single, but the 1961 version was not given a single release until 1992. The song was one of the 40 songs she recorded with Quincy Jones in 1961. Some of these were issued on two albums: I Wanna Be Loved and Tears and Laughter, both released in 1962. The song "Tears And Laughter" was released as a single, but "Mad About the Boy" remained unreleased until Golden Hits – Volume One, a 1963 compilation. By that point, Washington had moved from the Mercury label to Roulette. The recording was also issued on other Washington compilations. + +Washington's version was popularised for a new generation when it was used as a backing track in a 1992 television advertisement for Levi's jeans. In the commercial, which is influenced by the 1968 Burt Lancaster film The Swimmer, a young man runs through an American suburban neighbourhood stripping down to only his jeans, invades private gardens and dives into a series of swimming pools to shrink his jeans. Washington's recording was re-released by Mercury as a tie-in in with the advertising campaign, and the cover art featured a shot of the shirtless man emerging from a swimming pool and bore the Levi's logo. The single entered the Top 50 in the UK Singles Chart. + +Other recordings + + Noël Coward with orchestra conducted by Ray Noble in London on 20 September 1932. The recording was not issued at the time but has been included on CD collections. + Caro Emerald with Jools Holland's Rhythm and Blues Orchestra on the album 'The Golden Age of Song' (2012). + Phyllis Robins with Jack Hylton & his Orchestra in London on 3 October 1932. + Anona Winn with the Blue Lyres in London in October 1932. + Elsie Carlisle with Ray Starita & his Ambassadors Band in London on 5 November 1932. + Maxine Sullivan on 1 May 1940. + Patti Page on the album The Waltz Queen + Jessica Biel on the soundtrack for the film Easy Virtue (adapted from the Noël Coward play) + Helen Forrest in 1949, later used in the video game Fallout: New Vegas + +The song has been performed by a number of other artists, including: + + Belle Baker + Georgia Brown – Georgia Brown (1963) + Blossom Dearie + Buddy DeFranco + Marianne Faithfull + Frances Faye + Maria Friedman + Jackie Gleason + Gogi Grant + Glen Gray and the Casa Loma Orchestra + Joyce Grenfell + Dick and Kiz Harp – At the 90th Floor (1960) 90th Floor Records + Lena Horne + Greta Keller + Eartha Kitt + Cleo Laine + Gertrude Lawrence + Amanda Lear – Let Me Entertain You (2016) + Beatrice Lillie + Julie London – London by Night (1958) + Andrea Marcovicci + Billy May – The Ultimate (2002) + Marian McPartland – At the Hickory House (1996) + Carmen McRae + Anita O'Day + Esther Ofarim 1968 + Cybill Shepherd, as the title track for her 1978 album with Stan Getz + Elaine Paige on her 1993 album Romance & the Stage + Miss Piggy (as Mad About the Frog) + Tom RobinsonCabaret '79 (1982) + Dinah Shore + Sheridan Smith + Jeri Southern – The Dream's on Jeri (1998) + Cécile McLorin Salvant + Adam Lambert (2022) + +See also +Liberace + +References + +External links +Sold on Song: bbc.co.uk, accessed 6 January 2009 +Levi's 1992 "Swimmer" commercial dead link +[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c4Kz7e7B7_E Esther Ofarim – Mad about the boy + +Songs written by Noël Coward +Lena Horne songs +1932 songs +Dinah Washington songs +Tom Robinson songs +Mercury Records singles +Torch songs +LGBT-related songs +Shayne Breuer (born 10 September 1972) is a former Australian rules footballer in the Australian Football League (AFL). He is notable for kicking Port Adelaide's first goal in the AFL. + +AFL career + +Geelong (1994–1996) +Breuer started at Geelong and played every game in Geelong's AFL Grand Final years of 1994 and 1995, having 50 games on the board after only two seasons. He was a magnificent on-baller whose best year was in 1995 where he also booted 40 goals (career high five goals in the qualifying final against Footscray). + +Port Adelaide (1997–1999) +After a solid year in 1996, Breuer went on to play on with Port Adelaide in their inaugural year in 1997 where he kicked 17 goals and played 21 games. But after the 1997 season he struggled to get a spot in the team. He played three seasons with the Power before getting de-listed at the end of the 1999 season. + +Breuer is mostly remembered by Port Adelaide fans for kicking Port Adelaide's first goal in the AFL. + +Coaching career +Breuer had also coached Kalkee in the Horsham district league. After coaching Kalkee, he took on the coaching role at Horsham Saints Football Netball Club where he led the club to back-to-back senior premierships + +Current status +Breuer played in the 2009 West End Slowdown. He has now retired from Kalkee and owns and manages sporting goods store Intersport in Horsham. + +External links + +Geelong Football Club players +Port Adelaide Football Club players +Port Adelaide Football Club players (all competitions) +Woodville-West Torrens Football Club players +Australian rules footballers from South Australia +Living people +1972 births +Parantaka Chola I (Tamil: பராந்தக சோழன் I; 873 CE–955 CE) was a Chola emperor who ruled for forty-eight years, annexing Pandya by defeating Rajasimhan II and in the Deccan won the Battle of Vallala against Rashtrakutas which happened before 916 CE. The best part of his reign was marked by increasing success and prosperity. + +Invasion of the Pandya kingdom +Parantaka I continued the expansion started by his father, and invaded the Pandya kingdom in 915. He captured the Pandyan capital Madurai and assumed the title Madurain-konda (Capturer of Madurai). The Pandyan ruler Maravarman Rajasinha II sought the help of Kassapa V of Anuradhapura who sent an army to his aid. Parantaka I defeated the combined army at the battle of Vellore. The Pandya king fled into exile in Sri Lanka and Parantaka I completed his conquest of the entire Pandya country. + +Parantaka I spent many years in the newly conquered country reducing it to subjugation, and when he felt he had at last achieved his aim, he wanted to celebrate his victory by a coronation in Madurai in which he was to invest himself with the insignia of Pandyan monarchy. However he was failed in this attempt by the Pandyan king, who had carried them away and left them in the safe custody of the Lankan king. Towards the end of his reign, Parantaka I tried to capture them by invading Lanka. Mahavamsa records that the Lankan king Udaya IV took the Pandya crown and the jewels and hid himself in the Rohana hills. Parantaka I's armies had to return empty handed. + +After his exploits in the Pandya country and in Lanka, he took the title of Maduraiyum Eelamum Konda Parakesarivarman – Parakesarivarman who conquered Madurai and Sri Lanka. + +War against Rashtrakutas +Aditya I had two sons namely Parantaka I and Kannara Deva. The eldest son was Parantaka, born to a Chera wife; the youngest son was Kannara Devan, born to Rashtrakuta wife. After the death of Aditya I, Rashtrakuta king Krishna II tried to establish his influence in the Chola country by placing his grandson Kannara Deva on the throne. But in 907 CE, Parantaka became the king. Disappointed by this, Krishna II invaded the Chola country. On Rashtrakuta side, prince Indra III lead the battle, while the Chola side was led by King Parantaka and Prince Rajaditya. During 911 CE in the battle of Vallala, a large number of Rashtrakuta soldiers died and their army began to weaken. Krishna II withdrew and his forces retreated. The Cholas advanced further and attacked the Rashtrakutas and chased away from their territory. Eventually the Cholas defeated the Rashtrakutas. Parantaka Chola's early series of victories would also includes this Rashtrakuta War. + +Extent of Parantaka I's influence +At the height of his success, Parantaka's dominions comprised almost the whole of the Tamil country right up to Nellore in Andhra Pradesh. It is clear from other Chola grants that Parantaka I was a great militarist who had made extensive conquests. He may have had it recorded, but those records are lost to us. He is known to have defeated the kings of Deccan kingdoms by 912 CE and completed at least temporarily the conquests started by his father Aditya. Later in 949 CE, Rashtrakuta king Krishna III waged war against Cholas, so Parantaka sent an army under his son Rajaditya but the Cholas were defeated and crown prince Rajaditya was killed in the battlefield while sitting on elephant. + +Civic and religious contributions + +Although was engaged for the greater part of his long reign in warlike operations, yet he was not unmindful of the victories of peace. The internal administration of his country was a matter in which he took a keen interest. He laid out the rules for the conduct of the village assemblies in an inscription. The village institutions of South India, of course, date from a much earlier period than that of , but he introduced many salutary reforms for the proper administration of local self-Government. + +The copper-plate inscriptions detail Parantaka I's promotion of agricultural prosperity by the digging of numerous canals all over the country. + +He also utilised the spoils of war to donate to numerous temple charities. He is reported to have covered the Chidambaram Siva Temple with golden roof. "Thillaiyambalathhukku pon koorai veiyntha thevan" He was a devout Saiva (follower of Siva) in religion. + +A record obtained from the ancient temple at Anbil near Tiruchirappalli, sung by nayanmars, which has fragmented documents dating back to at least six thousand years, informs that instituted some services in the temple with one hundred and eight servitors. However, these documents might be the information about an earlier Parantaka I since lived before only one thousand years. These servitors worked on ancient jaiminiya recension of samaveda and continuously performed many rituals like the live vasantayaagam, somayagam, atiratram, agnihotram etc. + +Personal life +From his inscriptions we can gather a few details about Parantaka I's personal life. He had many wives, of whom no fewer than eleven appear in the inscriptions. He was religious but secular and encouraged various faiths. We find various members of his family building temples and regularly making donations to various shrines across the kingdom. Kotanta Rama, incidental with Rajaditya, was the eldest son of Parantaka I. There is an inscription of him from Tiruvorriyur making a donation for some lamps during the 30th year of his father. Besides him he had several other sons; Arikulakesari, Gandaraditya and Uttamasili. + +Parankata had the Chera Perumals as his close allies and the relationship was further strengthened by two marriages. The king is assumed to have married two distinct Chera princesses (the mothers of his two sons, Rajaditya and Arinjaya). + +A member of the retinue of pillaiyar (prince) Rajadittadeva gave a gift to the Vishnu temple at Tirunavalur/Tirumanallur in the 32nd year of Parantaka I. Tirunavalur was also known as "Rajadittapuram" after Rajaditya. It is assumed that a large number of warriors from the aristocratic families of the Chera kingdom were part of the contingent of this Chera-Chola prince. In the 39th year of Parantaka I, his daughter-in-law, Mahadevadigal, a queen of Rajaditya and the daughter of Lataraja donated a lamp to the temple of Rajadityesvara for the merit of her brother. He had at least two daughters: Viramadevi and Anupama. Uttamasili does not appear to have lived long enough to succeed to the Chola throne. + +He bore numerous epithets such as Viranarayana, Virakirti, Vira-Chola, Vikrama-Chola, Irumadi-Sola (Chola with two crowns alluding to the Chola and the Pandya kingdoms), Devendran (lord of the gods), Chakravartin (the emperor), Panditavatsalan (fond of learned men), Kunjaramallan (the wrestler with elephants) and Surachulamani (the crest jewel of the heroes). + +Parantaka I died in 955. His second son Gandaraditya succeeded him. + +Inscriptions + +The following is an inscription of Parantaka I from Tiruvorriyur. It is important as it shows that his dominions included regions beyond Thondaimandalam: + +Here we have his son Arinjaya making a donation. Once again it is from Tiruvorriyur: + +We also have several inscriptions of his son Rajaditya from Tirunavalur. One such inscription is the following from the temple of Rajadityesvara in Tirunavalur. The temple was also called Tiruttondîsvaram: + +Chola-Chera Perumal relations (c. 9th-10th centuries CE) + +See also + Battle of Takkolam + +Notes + +References + Venkata Ramanappa, M. N. (1987). Outlines of South Indian History. (Rev. edn.) New Delhi: Vikram. + Early Chola temples: to Rajaraja I, A.D. 907–985 By S. R. Balasubrahmanyam + South Indian Inscriptions: Miscellaneous inscriptions in Tamil (4 pts. in 2) By Eugen Hultzsch, Hosakote Krishna Sastri, V. Venkayya, Archaeological Survey of India + A topographical list of the inscriptions of the Madras Presidency, collected till 1915: with notes and references, Volume 1 By Vijayaraghava Rangacharya + A topographical list of inscriptions in the Tamil Nadu and Kerala states, Volume 2 By T. V. Mahalingam + Nilakanta Sastri, K. A. (1935). The CōĻas, University of Madras, Madras (Reprinted 1984). + Nilakanta Sastri, K. A. (1955). A History of South India, OUP, New Delhi (Reprinted 2002). + South Indian shrines: illustrated By P. V. Jagadisa Ayyar + +Chola emperors +900s births +955 deaths +10th-century Hindus +10th-century Indian monarchs +Year of birth uncertain +Arundel was twice a parliamentary constituency in the Kingdom of England, the Kingdom of Great Britain, and the United Kingdom. The first incarnation strictly comprised the town centre of Arundel and was a borough constituency in Sussex first enfranchised in 1332 and disfranchised in 1868 under the Reform Act 1867. Arundel initially elected two members, but this was reduced to one in 1832 by the Great Reform Act. + +The second incarnation was broader, reaching to Bognor Regis. It was created by the Boundary Commission in the 1974 boundary changes, and existed until 1997. This Arundel seat elected only one member. The territory previously covered by Arundel was split between Arundel & South Downs and Bognor Regis & Littlehampton constituencies. + +Members of Parliament + +1332-1640 + +Back to Members of Parliament + +1640-1832 + +Back to Members of Parliament + +1832-1868 + +Back to Members of Parliament + +Arundel County Constituency (1974-1997) + +Elections + +Elections in the 1830s + +Elections in the 1840s + +Back to Elections + +Elections in the 1850s +FitzAlan-Howard's resignation in protest at the passing of the Ecclesiastical Titles Act 1851 caused a by-election. + +Back to Elections + +Elections in the 1860s + +Back to Elections + +Elections in the 1970s + +Back to elections + +Elections in the 1980s + +Back to Elections + +Elections in the 1990s + +Back to Top + +See also +List of parliamentary constituencies in West Sussex + +Notes and references + +Sources +Election results, 1974 - 1997 +Concise Dictionary of National Biography (entry on Sir Nicholas Pelham) +D Brunton & D H Pennington, Members of the Long Parliament (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1954) +Cobbett's Parliamentary history of England, from the Norman Conquest in 1066 to the year 1803 (London: Thomas Hansard, 1808) + Maija Jansson (ed.), Proceedings in Parliament, 1614 (House of Commons) (Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society, 1988) + J Holladay Philbin, Parliamentary Representation 1832 - England and Wales (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1965) + +Parliamentary constituencies in South East England (historic) +1332 establishments in England +Constituencies of the Parliament of the United Kingdom disestablished in 1868 +Constituencies of the Parliament of the United Kingdom established in 1974 +Constituencies of the Parliament of the United Kingdom disestablished in 1997 +Arundel +Luis Andrew Martinez (November 15, 1972 – May 18, 2006) was an activist who was known at the University of California, Berkeley as the Naked Guy. + +Early attention +Martinez was a high school football player when he attended Monta Vista High School in Cupertino, California. + +Martinez attended classes at the University of California, Berkeley. In September 1992, his second year in college, he began appearing unclad in public and led a campus "nude-in" to protest social repression. Campus police first arrested him that fall for indecent exposure when he jogged unclothed near southside dormitories late on a Saturday night. The county prosecutor refused to prosecute, concluding that nudity without lewd behavior was not illegal. + +Martinez began strolling around campus unclothed, citing philosophical reasons. He explained that when he dressed in expensive, uncomfortable, stylish, "appropriate" attire, he hid the fact that his personal belief was that clothes were useless in his environment except as a tool for class and gender differentiation. The university then banned nudity on campus. + +Martinez wrote a 1992 guest column in the Oakland Tribune: "When I walk around nude, I am acting how I think it is reasonable to act, not how middle-class values tell me I should act. I am refusing to hide my dissent in normalcy even though it is very easy to do so." Martinez, who typically attended classes wearing only sandals and a backpack, became a cause célèbre at the university for a while, participating in a number of nude events on campus and performances by the Bay Area nude performance group the X-Plicit Players. + +He appeared on national talk shows, was profiled in a photo essay in Playgirl and was parodied in the 1994 college comedy PCU. As a response to Martinez's actions, UC Berkeley issued its "Policy Statement Concerning Public Nudity and Sexually Offensive Conduct" banning public nudity on December 7, 1992. + +Then neither employed nor furthering his education, Martinez continued living in Berkeley, and was arrested for public nudity by the city police. He fought those charges and won. It remained legal to walk around nude in Berkeley and he went further, attending a Berkeley city council meeting in the nude. The city adopted an anti-nudity ordinance in July 1993. Martinez and some of his supporters then attended another city council meeting naked and he became the first person arrested under the new city ordinance. He pleaded guilty to the misdemeanor charge and got two years probation. + +Later life +Martinez began wearing clothes again and began to write a manuscript about his experiences. He traveled to Europe and studied judo. After his return to the United States and continued unemployment, he began to manifest symptoms of mental illness and he spent much of the decade following his period of national attention moving among halfway houses, psychiatric institutions, occasional homelessness, and jail, but never getting comprehensive treatment, his family said. + +Martinez showed signs of schizophrenia and was prescribed medication, but with little improvement. "It was an endless cycle of trying to get answers but never getting any," said his mother. "It was endless, endless, endless." + +On January 10, 2006, Martinez was arrested after a fight at a halfway house and charged with two counts of battery and one count of assault with a deadly weapon. He was placed in maximum-security custody in Santa Clara County Jail in San Jose, California. + +Death +The last time Martinez was seen alive by his mother was three weeks before his death when she had visited him in jail. She recounted, "He was sad. He was tired. He said he had enough. I alerted everyone, but nothing happened." On the evening of his death, a guard checked on him at 11 p.m. and he was fine, but a few minutes later other inmates reported hearing sounds coming from his cell. An officer returned at 11:19 and found Martinez unconscious. + +The 33-year-old Martinez was found with a plastic bag around his head. He was taken to Santa Clara Valley Medical Center, where he was pronounced dead of suicide on May 18, 2006. Martinez's funeral was held on May 25. A memorial for him was held May 27th at the People's Park in Berkeley. On November 12 of that year, a public memorial was held at a community recreation center in Cupertino. + +In 2009, his mother, Esther Krenn, settled a wrongful death lawsuit against Santa Clara County, which paid her $1 million and altered its policies so that family members would be notified in the event of a suicide attempt. + +See also + +Stephen Gough +Naturism + +References + +External links +Berkeley Municipal Code: Chapter 13.32: NUDITY IN PUBLIC PLACES +"The Naked Guy", The New York Times Magazine profile/obituary, December 31, 2006 +Andrew Martinez memorial site, with extensive interview + +1972 births +2006 suicides +2006 deaths +American naturists +American people who died in prison custody +Hispanic and Latino American activists +People from Santa Clara County, California +People who died by suicide in prison custody +Prisoners who died in California detention +Social nudity advocates +Suicides in California +University of California, Berkeley people +The Vancouver VooDoo were an inline hockey team based in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, which played in Roller Hockey International (RHI). The VooDoo were one of the original 12 teams to join the league in 1993. Founded and owned by Tiger Williams and Bill McMenamon, the team played in the PNE Agrodome in 1993 and 1994, the Pacific Coliseum in 1995. In 1996, the team played in General Motors Place after being sold to Orca Bay Sports and Entertainment, but folded in 1996. + +Season by season +The Voodoo experienced consistent success in the regular season throughout their four-year history, winning their division all four years. Despite their regular season success, however, the Voodoo never made it out of the second round of the playoffs. + +1993 +In the RHI's inaugural season, Vancouver finished first in the King Division, atop the Calgary Rad'z, Portland Rage, and Utah Rollerbees, good for second overall, behind the Anaheim Bullfrogs. In the first round of the playoffs, they were eliminated by the division rival Calgary Rad'z 8–7. + +Star forward Jose Charbonneau, a former NHLer, led the RHI in regular season scoring with 68 points in 14 games. He attracted the attention of the NHL's Vancouver Canucks, who resigned him, despite having previously released Charbonneau in 1989. Charbonneau went on to play 33 more games for the Canucks before finishing his career in Europe. Team co-owner and head coach Tiger Williams, who holds the NHL career mark for penalty minutes, played in one game for the Voodoo and registered two points, with a goal and an assist, plus two penalty minutes. + +Playing at the PNE Agrodome, the Voodoo's average attendance was 3,800. + +1994 +As league expansion doubles the league's team total to 24, the Voodoo are placed in the new Northwest Division with the Calgary Rad'z, Phoenix Cobras, Portland Rage, Edmonton Sled Dogs, and Sacramento River Rats. They finish atop their division, as well as second overall in the Western Conference, behind the Los Angeles Blades. The Voodoo's leading scorer was Ryan Harrison, who finished with 62 points in 22 games, good for 15th overall in the league. + +In the playoffs, the Voodoo were once again defeated in the first round, ousted by Portland in two games; the VooDoo lost the first game in an 8-7 shootout at Portland before being eliminated in game two in Vancouver by a score of 14-8. + +The Voodoo's average attendance rises to 4,600 as they begin playing games at the Pacific Coliseum – in close vicinity to the PNE Agrodome – as well. + +1995 +The Voodoo finish atop their division and second in their conference for the third straight season. Ryan Harrison leads Vancouver in scoring again with 63 points in 24 games, 15th overall in the league once more. + +In the playoffs, Vancouver makes it out of the first round for the first time, defeating the Oakland Skates by a score of 10-4. The playoff bid was halted in the second round by the San Jose Rhinos, the inevitable Murphy Cup champions. + +As the Voodoo fully relocated to the Pacific Coliseum, their average attendance rose again to nearly 5,300, third-highest in the league. + +1996 +The Voodoo relocated again to the Vancouver Canucks' home stadium General Motors Place, and the average attendance peaks at 5,500. Vancouver's Doug Ast finished second overall in the league in regular season scoring with 91 points in 28 games. +Vancouver won their division for the fourth consecutive season, but are eliminated in the second round in three games by the Anaheim Bullfrogs. + +At the end of the 1996 season, the Vancouver Voodoo franchise folded after four years. + +Regular season records +For the four seasons played by the VooDoo, the team's regular season records were: + +External links +RHI Season Archives + +References + + +Roller Hockey International teams +Voo +Sports clubs and teams established in 1993 +Sports clubs and teams disestablished in 1996 +1993 establishments in British Columbia +1996 disestablishments in British Columbia +The Invisible Plane (commonly known as the Invisible Jet) is a plane appearing in DC Comics, commonly used by Wonder Woman as a mode of transport. It was created by William Moulton Marston and first appeared in Sensation Comics #1 (January 1942). + +Original history +The Pre-Crisis version of the invisible plane was a necessity because before the Crisis on Infinite Earths rewrote Wonder Woman's history—along with the histories of many other heroes—Wonder Woman simply could not fly. She grew increasingly powerful through the Silver Age of comic books and beyond, acquiring the power to ride wind currents thus allowing her to imitate flight over short distance. This had limitations, however; for example, if there was no wind and the air was completely still she would be trapped on the ground or if dropped from a distance that she would helplessly fall out of control to the ground. Though this meant that she would rely on the invisible plane less frequently, she always had need of it. + +The Invisible Plane was a creation of Diana's during her younger years on Paradise Island. She created it to be an improvement on her mother's planes which would be shot down in Man's World. The result of her innovation was an invisible plane that could fly at terrific speeds silently and not be detected by hostile forces, thus avoiding unpleasant conflict. Initially, it was portrayed as being transparent. + +The Invisible Plane appeared in the very first comic stories, including All-Star Comics #8, where it is shown as being able to fly at over 2000 miles per hour (MPH) and to send out rainbow rays that penetrate the mist around Paradise Island, as well as landing stealthily and having a built-in radio. Wonder Woman is seen storing the plane at an abandoned farm near Washington, D.C., in the barn; she goes there as Lt. Prince and changes clothes in some of the earliest tales. Though never explicitly stated, the Plane is presumably stored there when not in use for the rest of the Pre-Crisis era. In a story made shortly after, it flies at 40 miles a second. + +Shortly thereafter, the telepathic capacities of Wonder Woman's tiara allow her to summon it, often to hover or swoop by the War Department, and she would exit on a rope ladder. She uses the plane to fly into outer space, and frequently transports Etta Candy and the Holliday Girls, Steve Trevor, or others. During the 1950s, the plane became a jet, and was often shown swooping over Lt. Prince's office; she stripped out of her uniform at super speed and would bound to the plane. Though the Plane was depicted as semi-transparent for the reader's convenience, in-story dialogue indicated that it actually was completely invisible, or at least able to become so as the need arose. + +Wonder Woman continued to use the plane for super-speed, outer space, and multi-dimensional transport up until the un-powered era of Diana Prince. When Wonder Woman resumed super-powered, costumed operations in 1973, she continued to use the jet as before, but did glide on air currents for short distances. At one point, Aphrodite granted the plane the power to fly faster than the speed of light for any interstellar voyages her champion might undertake. Thanks to tinkering by gremlins, the Plane even developed intelligence and the power to talk. The Plane proved a good friend, eager to help his "mistress" and her loved ones in any way possible. It got along especially well with Steve Trevor. + +Later history +In the Post-Crisis version of the DC Universe, Wonder Woman can fly, regardless of wind currents, and so has little need for the Invisible Plane. The Plane's history has subsequently been revised as well. + +The origin of the Modern Age version of the Invisible Jet was chronicled during John Byrne's run of Wonder Woman with more detailed information chronicled in Wonder Woman Secret Files #1. + +The being that would one day be called the Invisible Plane began life as an alien "morphing crystal" circling a distant planet with its "family", other morphing crystals who are collectively called the Ring. In their natural state, the Plane and its fellow members of the Ring resemble eggs made of semi transparent plastic. In time, it was separated from its family and was found by the Lansinarians, a blind subterranean race that lived underneath Antarctica. The Lansinarians could not react quickly enough to changes in their environment. Thus, they developed the morphing crystal they had found into a life support device that catered to their needs. These beings later bestow the device on Wonder Woman in gratitude for saving them. The plane, which possesses a sophisticated artificial intelligence, responds to Wonder Woman's thoughts. It is able to render itself invisible as well as alter its shape, transforming into any form of vehicle its bearer desires, be it a jet, submarine, motorcycle, or horse-drawn chariot. + +Wonder Woman, however, was initially unaware that her Invisible Plane was not only alive but was quite aware that it was being treated by its mistress as a lifeless tool. + +Lacking her daughter's power to fly and taking her daughter's original Golden Age incarnation, Wonder Woman's mother, Hippolyta, makes good use of the Plane during her time-travelling stint as the Wonder Woman of the 1940s. To adjust to the era, she willed the device to assume the form of a prop-driven plane and it took on the appearance of the original invisible plane of the earlier comics. After its return to modern times, the Plane once again begins to display a personality, and like its earlier incarnation, it ultimately develops the power to talk. When a villain manipulates the Plane's feelings of anger at having been ignored for so many years regardless of faithful service, it attacks Wonder Woman and her friends. But after realizing what it had done, it displays its capacity for remorse after and tried to make amends by transforming itself into a floating base above Gateway City for its mistress. Proving a good—though mostly silent and faceless—friend, the Plane receives a proper name: WonderDome. Later, Dome's technology is also incorporated into the Amazons' city of Themyscira following its reconstruction in the wake of the Imperiex War. Dome even reunites with members of its long lost family at one point. + +In Wonder Woman (vol. 2) #201 (by Greg Rucka), Dome sacrifices itself to prevent a tidal wave from killing thousands of innocent people. Having "died" to save so many, Dome is now more like a robot than a person. While it can still function in its traditional shape of an invisible plane, it can no longer alter its shape and is now a lifeless inanimate object that is neither intelligent nor self-aware. + +Specifications + Originally, the plane was supposed to be silent and move at supersonic speeds. + It was created to attune itself to its user and its environment. The vessel responds appropriately and can take the form of any vehicle of earth, water and beyond (a submarine or rocket ship). As seen in its stint as WonderDome, it could even turn itself into a flying fortress. + It has the power to be undetectable by radar or the human eye and the ability to shift from its crystal, "transparent mode" to complete invisibility rendering both itself and its occupants truly invisible, in true cloaking device technology form. + The invisible jet propels itself by harnessing gravitation particles. It is in this fashion also that it shields its passengers from the forces of sudden acceleration. + In outer space, the craft can extrude a portion of itself around Wonder Woman. Without taking in additional air supply, it can process one's own exhaled oxygen to allow breathing for 20 minutes. It can sense Wonder Woman's thoughts and will respond to her needs. + Arsenal: The invisible jet can shape projectile weapons out of its own substance but doing so depletes the amount of material in the vessel. When such depletion occurs, the craft can regenerate itself slowly. This function is to be avoided and used only when absolutely necessary as a last resort. + Although Wonder Woman possesses the power of flight, the invisible jet is very useful, as it contains certain on-board equipment, serves as a protective shelter, carries Wonder Woman's cargo, and, of course, renders her invisible for stealth missions. + +In other media + +Television + +Live-action + A full-size plane was featured in Wonder Woman, and shown several times during the World War II era. It was featured as a jet in two episodes of the CBS series, set in the 1970s, before disappearing. After its disappearance, Wonder Woman runs at incredible speeds, jumping great distances, or even changes costumes and rides to her destination on motorcycles. + + In the Supergirl episode "Welcome to Earth", a veiled reference is made to the plane when the President of the United States (played by Lynda Carter, who portrayed Wonder Woman in the live-action series) tells Supergirl "you ought to see my other jet". + +Animation + The invisible plane is a regular feature on the Super Friends cartoon show; Wonder Woman gives a ride to Aquaman and the Wonder Twins on a regular basis. In Challenge of the Superfriends, the invisible jet is shown using golden lasso projectiles. + The invisible plane has appeared on the animated series Justice League Unlimited. It had a separate origin that was supposed to have been told in an animated TV movie, Justice League: Worlds Collide, but the feature was never produced. Had it been produced, it would have also explained how the League roster would be expanded and transformed into Justice League Unlimited. At the 2007 Wonder Con in San Francisco, California, Bruce Timm announced that Justice League: Worlds Collide might be produced in the next few years. This was not the case, and the film was never made, but the origin story of the invisible plane intended for Worlds Collide was later worked into the stand-alone film Justice League: Crisis on Two Earths, as noted below. + Wonder Woman and her invisible plane appear in the Batman: The Brave and the Bold episode "Scorn of the Star Sapphire!" + The plane appears on Teen Titans Go! in a two-part special where the Teen Titans imitate the Justice League. + In the 2016 animated series Justice League Action, the jet is referenced by Booster Gold in "Watchtower Tours". + The plane appears in the Harley Quinn episode "Bachelorette". It is used as a passenger plane that takes visitors to and back from Themyscira, which had been converted into a resort. In the show's third season premiere, "HarlIvy", Harley and Ivy have stolen the jet and use it to engage in a worldwide bender of crime and shenanigans. The second episode of the season reveals the jet was destroyed during a fight with Plastique. + The plane appears in the Scooby-Doo and Guess Who? episode "The Scooby of a Thousand Faces!". + +Film + In the 2009 animated film Wonder Woman, Diana receives an invisible plane to transport Steve Trevor back to the outside world after he crash lands on their island and its hull configuration is consciously modelled after Trevor's fighter plane. In this version it is a stealth fighter jet and even its missiles are invisible. No explanation is ever given as to the origin of the invisible plane. + In the 2010 animated film Justice League: Crisis on Two Earths, Wonder Woman commandeers an attack plane from Owlman (an evil version of Batman) while the Justice League is on a parallel Earth dominated by their villainous counterparts, the Crime Syndicate. During the battle, the plane's cloaking device (the "Chameleon Circuit") shorts out while still in use, placing the vehicle in "cloak" mode permanently. After the mission's successful completion, Wonder Woman keeps the invisible plane as "spoils of war". + In the 2011 film Green Lantern, Hal Jordan gives his nephew Jason a crystal transparent toy model plane that alludes to the Invisible Plane. + The invisible plane appears in the 2013 film Lego Batman: The Movie – DC Super Heroes Unite. + In The Lego Movie during an attack in which the Batmobile is destroyed, Wonder Woman says "To the Invisible Jet!"; it is also destroyed afterwards. This phrase is a spoof of Batman's catchphrase from the 1960s live action television series of Batman. + In the 2019 animated movie Wonder Woman: Bloodlines, the jet is a new stealth jet for the US Air Force, featuring an active camouflage surface, secretly appropriated by Etta Candy for Wonder Woman and Steve Trevor's use. + In Wonder Woman 1984, Diana Prince and Steve Trevor take a fighter-bomber (in the film depicted by a fictional aircraft based on parts of the cockpit of an F-111 Aardvark and the fuselage, wings and tail of the Panavia Tornado GR1 - Reg ZA355) to fly to Egypt. When detected by a radar, Diana makes the plane invisible using her demigoddess abilities, as her father the Greek god Zeus hid Themyscira. + In DC League of Super-Pets, Krypto, Ace and the rest of the super pets attempted to use Wonder Woman's invisible jet to get to Stryker's Island to stop Lulu from breaking Lex Luthor out, only to get shot down by Whiskers. The running gag in the film was the jet was described to actually be more transparent than invisible. + +Video games + The invisible plane appears in Lego Dimensions and Lego DC Super-Villains. + +Spoofs + On April 1, 2015, the Smithsonian had a limited one-day viewing of the plane. + In a few episodes of SpongeBob SquarePants, Mermaid Man and Barnacle Boy's Invisible Boatmobile directly spoofs both the invisible plane and Batman's Batmobile. + The plane made a brief appearance on Family Guy. + The plane is assumed to appear in the Total Drama series, in which Lindsay impersonates Wonder Woman, and remarks when Courtney steps on her Invisible Jet. + +Web series + The invisible plane has appeared on the web series DC Super Hero Girls episode "Dude, Where's My Invisible Jet?". + +Notes + +References + Jett, Brett. "Who Is Wonder Woman?" (Manuscript) (2009): "Allegories", pp 72-73. + Jett, Brett. "Who Is Wonder Woman?--Bonus PDF"", (2009): "Bonus #2: Top 10 WW Questions Answered", pp 9–10. + Marston, W. M. (1936), "Cost Of Careers", in The Delineator, pp. 7, volume 128. + Marston, William Moulton. Emotions Of Abnormal People. London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trübner & Co, Ltd. 1928. + Jimenez, Phil (2008), "Wonder Woman's Invisible Jet", in Dougall, Alastair, The DC Comics Encyclopedia, London: Dorling Kindersley, pp. 34–35, + +DC Comics vehicles +Wonder Woman +Fiction about invisibility +Fictional elements introduced in 1942 +Shopping channels (also known in British English as teleshopping) are a type of television program or specialty channel devoted to home shopping. Their formats typically feature live presentations and demonstrations of products, hosted by on-air presenters and other spokespeople who provide a sales pitch for the product. Viewers are also instructed on how they can order the product. Shopping channels may focus primarily on mainstream merchandise, or more specialized categories such as high-end fashion and jewelry. The term can also apply to channels whose programming consists exclusively of direct-response advertising and infomercials. + +The concept was first popularized in the United States in the 1980s, when Lowell "Bud" Paxson and Roy Speer launched a local cable channel known as the Home Shopping Club—which later launched nationally as the Home Shopping Network (HSN). It later gained competition from QVC, who would eventually acquire HSN in 2017. Home shopping channels originally relied on telephone ordering, but have since been required to emphasize online shopping as part of their business models in order to compete with online-only competitors (while distinguishing themselves with their use of on-air pitches and offers to entice potential customers). In 2015, QVC acquired the retailer Zulily in an effort to expand its presence in online retail. ShopHQ is another US-based shopping channel. + +Outside of the US, few of the notable shopping channels are TV Shop, QVC UK in Europe, The Shopping Channel in New Zealand, Shop TV in Philippines and TSC in Canada. + +References + +Non-store retailing +The Turgay ([torɣai] "Tour-GUY") (also known as Torgai, Torghay or Turgai; , Romanised: Torğai; Romanised: Turgay) is a river in Kazakhstan. It has a length of and a drainage basin of . + +The Naurzum Nature Reserve is a protected area located in the river basin. + +Course +The river originates at the confluence of the Zhaldama and Kara-Turgai rivers, which have their sources in the Kazakh Uplands. It then flows along the Turgay Depression. The Turgay disappears in the endorheic basin of Shalkarteniz. + +The Ubagan, a tributary of the Tobol, drains the valley to the north, the Turgay to the south. There are many shallow, often salty lakes in the valley. In the summer it dries up and its water becomes salty in the lower reaches of certain sections. The river is mostly fed by snow. It freezes in November and thaws in April. + +Tributaries +The main tributaries of the Turgay are the long Irgiz, the long Kara-Turgay and the Kobarga on the left, as well as the Zhaldama, Tokanay and Ulkayak on the right. In years of high water the long Saryozen river may flow across lake Sarykopa into the Turgay through a channel near Tauysh village. + +See also +List of rivers of Kazakhstan +Lakes of the lower Turgay and Irgiz + +References + +Rivers of Kazakhstan +Shalkarteniz basin +Turgay is a Turkish given name for males. People named Turgay include: + + Turgay Avcı, Turkish Cypriot politician + Turgay Bahadır, Turkish-Austrian footballer + Turgay Gemicibasi, Turkish footballer + Turgay Semercioğlu, Turkish footballer + Turgay Şeren, Turkish football manager + +Turgay may also refer to: + Turgay (river), a river in northern Kazakhstan + Turgay Depression, a structural basin in Kazakhstan + Turgay Plateau, in northern Kazakhstan + Turgay Oblast (Russian Empire), a former administrative division + +See also + Tugay (disambiguation) + Turgai (disambiguation) + +Turkish masculine given names +Masculine given names +Heinrich Johann Nepomuk von Crantz (Roodt-sur-Eisch, Luxembourg, 25 November 1722 – 18 January 1799, Judenburg, Austria) was a botanist and a physician. + +In 1750 he obtained his doctorate of medicine in Vienna, where he was a pupil of Gerard van Swieten (1700–1772). He studied obstetrics in Paris and London. In Paris he was influenced by André Levret (1703–1780) and Nicolas Puzos (1686–1753). + +He was first married to Anna Susanne Petrasch and then to Magda Lena de Tremon. He had two sons and one daughter. + +He became a lecturer in obstetrics at St. Mary's Hospital in Vienna in 1754. From 1756 to 1774, he taught physiology and materia medica at the university in that city. + +He was the author of: + Einleitung in eine wahre und gegründete Hebammenkunst (1756). + Commentarius de rupto in partus doloribus a foetu utero (1756). + Commentatio de instrumentorum in arte obstetricia historia utilitate et recta ac praepostera applicatione (1757). + De systemate irritabilitatis (1761). + Materia medica et chirurgica (three volumes, 1762) (Vol. 1 - 3 1765 Digital edition by the University and State Library Düsseldorf) + De aquis medicatis principatus Transsylvaniae (1773). + Die Gesundbrunnen der Österreichischen Monarchie (1777). + +He recommended better methods of hygiene for midwives. In addition to his work in medicine, he studied chemistry, botany, and the sources of mineral water. +The plant genus Crantzia (Gesneriaceae) was named for him by Thomas Nuttall. + +References + +1722 births +1797 deaths +18th-century Austrian physicians +18th-century Austrian botanists +Edlers of Austria +Alumni of the Athénée de Luxembourg +Austrian people of Luxembourgian descent +University of Vienna alumni +KUT (90.5 FM) is a listener-supported and corporate-sponsored public radio station based in Austin, Texas. KUT is owned and operated by faculty and staff of the University of Texas at Austin. It is the National Public Radio member station for central Texas. Its studio operations are located on campus at the Belo Center for New Media. KUT is one of three radio outlets based on UT campus alongside student-run KVRX 91.7 FM and KUTX 98.9 FM. + +KUT's main transmitter broadcasts with an effective radiated power of 24,500 watts and is located 8 miles west of Downtown Austin at the University of Texas Bee Cave Research Center. KUT is licensed to broadcast in the digital hybrid HD format. + +A second station, KUTX, serving San Angelo at 90.1 MHz, was sold to Texas Tech University in 2010 in part because Angelo State University had become part of the Texas Tech University System. The call letters were changed from KUTX to KNCH. The KUTX call letters were moved to KUT's repeater station in Somerville, broadcasting to the Bryan/College Station area on 88.1 FM. On August 23, 2012, the UT System Board of Regents voted to move forward to purchase KXBT-FM 98.9 FM (Leander/Austin) from Border Media Business Trust. On January 2, 2013, KXBT became KUTX, creating an Austin-based sister station for KUT. At that time, KUT adopted an all-news/talk format utilizing programming from NPR, the BBC, PRI and others. The music programming formerly heard on KUT was moved to KUTX to create a full-time music service, primarily an eclectic mix of alt pop/rock, folk, Americana, bluegrass, jazz, blues supplemented by specialty programs including Twine Time, Folkways, Across the Water (Celtic music), and Horizontes (Latin music). + +HD Programming + +KUT HD1 is a digital version of the over-the-air analog signal. +KUT HD2 is the BBC World Service. +KUT HD3 is TMX.fm +(An HD Radio is required for all HD stations.) + +Local productions + +Local productions include In Black America and Texas Standard (hosted by David Brown). Latino USA with Maria Hinojosa also originated at KUT but is now independently produced. + +Former music shows that moved to KUTX include Eklektikos, hosted by John Aielli (with KUT since 1966); Left of the Dial; and shows hosted by Jay Trachtenberg, and Jody Denberg. + +Funding +Like other public radio stations in the United States, KUT broadcasts on-air pledge drives in order to raise monetary contributions from listeners. Listener contributions and corporate sponsorship, termed "community support", account for roughly 80% of the station's budget. Sponsors are noted on-air in the form of abbreviated announcements called underwriting spots. + +History + +University of Texas' early radio activities +The actual beginning date of radio transmissions on the UT-Austin campus has never been fully substantiated. There is an unofficial reference to an on-campus radio operation as early as 1912. But the most reliable information indicates that the first authorization was an experimental radio station license — bearing the call sign 5XU — that was issued to the University on March 22, 1921. + +A year later, on March 22, 1922, a new AM band broadcasting station license was issued, bearing the randomly assigned call letters WCM. In its first years, the broadcasting station was used for a number of purposes, beginning as a demonstration project in the Physics Department, whose Professor Simpson L. Brown had persuaded the administration to let him build the station in the first place. Beginning in 1923, though, funding concerns prompted a transfer of operational control to the University's Extension Division for extension teaching. One of the stipulations of the transfer agreement was that funds would be provided for operations and maintenance to put the station in a "first-class" condition. The funds, however, did not materialize and broadcasting suffered until a state agriculture official needed a means to broadcast daily crop and weather reports. + +A deal between the official and UT's Extension Division allowed agriculture broadcasts for one hour per day in exchange for equipment maintenance. At other times of the day, the University would broadcast items of interest from the campus, including a number of faculty lecture series. But by the end of 1924, the Physics Department decided it wanted the station back, and with the approval of the Board of Regents, the Physics Department regained control in the summer of 1925. They had a new license granted on October 30 and it bore, for the first time, the call letters KUT. + +KUT history 1925-1929 +Professor Simpson L. Brown — in addition to his teaching and research work in the Physics Department — served simultaneously as general manager, technical director, and producer. Programs were aired 3 nights a week from 8 to 10 with no sponsors or commercials. There were concerts by the University Symphony and other Austin musical organizations as well as discussions, lectures, and speeches by faculty, state officials, and agriculture experts. Weekly services were broadcast from St. David's Episcopal Church and, during football season, fans could listen to play-by-play descriptions of the Longhorn games. + +KUT's early years were ambitious but, by 1927, ambition had outrun the funding. The expense of operating and maintaining the station had simply become too great for the Physics Department to sustain. University President Harry Benedict appointed a committee to study the matter, and the committee recommended that the project be discontinued. In 1929 The station equipment was dismantled and returned to the Physics labs for experimentation, and KUT's license was sold and converted to a commercial station, which is now KTRH in Houston. The University of Texas would not return to the airwaves until thirty years later, this time on the FM band. + +KUT chronology 1958 to present + +1958 - Signed on as KUT-FM on November 10, licensed to the University of Texas as an Educational station broadcasting at 90.7 MHz from the School of Journalism (now Geography) building at Whitis Avenue & 24th Street, using a General Electric transmitter built in 1939: power (4,100 watts), antenna height (268 feet), total signal radius (15 miles). + +1961 - Moved to newly refurbished quarters in the Radio/Television building on Speedway, a site now occupied by Robert A. Welch Hall. + +1965 - Reformatted to an arts and information program schedule following the demise of Austin's commercial classical music station (KHFI), and began the first live Saturday afternoon airings in Austin of the Metropolitan Opera radio broadcasts. + +1970 - Station was qualified by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) to receive financial assistance provided to noncommercial radio stations for the first time ever by the federal government. Of the some 600 noncommercial radio stations that were licensed by the FCC at the time, only KUT and 69 others met the CPB qualification criteria. + +1971 - Became a charter member of National Public Radio (NPR); contributed the first of, what would become in time, 14 of the station's employees to the NPR staff; and carried the first-ever NPR broadcast (All Things Considered) in May. + +1974 - Moved to completely new, specially-designed quarters in the College of Communication complex at Guadalupe & 26th Street. + +1975 - Hosted Bob Edwards, then co-anchoring All Things Considered, and the NPR news production team during dedication week for the new Communication complex. The national All Things Considered broadcasts were transmitted each evening that week from the new KUT studio facilities. + +1979 - Carried the November inaugural broadcast of NPR's Morning Edition, with Bob Edwards as host; in doing so, KUT joined 106 others of NPR's 157 member-stations in launching what has become one of the best and most honored of public radio's national programs. + +1980 - Installed its new public radio network satellite earth terminal and became NPR's southwestern regional uplink, one of only 17 network stations with the capability to transmit as well as receive satellite-delivered radio programs. Production of In Black America moved from Houston to KUT Austin. It is still hosted weekly by John L. Hanson Jr. + +1982 - Call letters changed from KUT-FM to KUT. Began broadcasting in stereo at 90.5 MHz with 100,000 watts of power, antenna height at 1,595 feet, and a total signal radius of 97 miles—bringing to fruition the federal funding and extraordinarily lengthy regulatory application process that had been started in 1972. + +1984 - Won the Texas Governor's Barbara Jordan Award for "excellence in the communication of the reality of disabled people" through the production of SoundSight, a weekly news-and-features program for blind and print-impaired listeners. + +1986 - Won, jointly with the UT McDonald Observatory, The Ohio State University Award for production of the astronomy radio series Star Date. The series was cited for "excellence in educational, informational, and public affairs broadcasting." + +1988 - Celebrated its 30th anniversary with a series of special events, capped by "An Evening with Bob Edwards", NPR's Morning Edition host. + +1990 - Was recognized, for the 10th consecutive year, as the "Best Radio Station" in Austin by The Austin Chronicle's readers' poll. + +1991 - Held a special one-day fundraiser to assist NPR in meeting emergency budget needs for news coverage of the Persian Gulf War. The $25,000 raised by KUT was the second highest amount raised among all of NPR's participating member-stations. + +1992 - Presented the first of its continuing annual celebrations of the short story—Selected Shorts on Tour—a collaboration with New York City's Symphony Space, producer of NPR's weekly series Selected Shorts (now distributed by Public Radio International). + +1993 - Celebrated its 35th anniversary and—in partnership with UT Austin's Center for Mexican American Studies and with major initial grants from The Ford Foundation and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting—launched the national radio series Latino USA at a "Cinco de Mayo" reception in Washington, D.C., with President Clinton in attendance along with members of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus and cabinet secretaries Federico Peña and Henry Cisneros. + +1994 - Completed the construction of a new on-air control room and library suite, using 50 percent federal matching funds to replace and upgrade the equipment in this control room and in the production control room; total project cost was in excess of $100,000. + +1995 - Achieved a listenership benchmark according to Arbitron research: more than 100,000 people were listening to the station each week. + +1996 - Completed the installation of its second station (KUTX 90.1 FM) using 75 percent federal matching funds and, delivering its signal via satellite, initiated a first public radio service for the 100,000 residents of San Angelo in the West Texas heartland; total project cost was upwards of $150,000. + +2013 - KUTX, KUT's sister station, launched, providing 24/7 non-stop music focusing on bringing the local music scene to a national audience. + +See also +List of radio stations in Texas + +References + +External links +KUT.org website +View KUT's Listening Area Coverage Map + +FCC History Cards for KUT (covering 1958-1981) +KUT's In Black America audio collection at the American Archive of Public Broadcasting + +NPR member stations +UT +University of Texas at Austin +Radio stations established in 1958 +1958 establishments in Texas +UT +Dodge Cove is a small unincorporated community of fewer than 100 people, located on Digby Island, British Columbia, Canada across from the city of Prince Rupert. In April 2015, the community had an estimated total of 29 residents. Dodge Cove does not have paved roads, automobiles or shopping centres, and was named in 1907 after George Blanchard Dodge. It was built over a Tsimshian village named Kanagatsiyot. A commercial ferry service has been proposed to service the area and other nearby communities. In contemporary times, construction of a liquefied natural gas facility was proposed, which some of the community's residents oppose. + +Overview +Life is simple in Dodge Cove, with no paved roads, no stores or shopping centres, and no automobiles. It has been estimated to be among the ten smallest unincorporated communities in British Columbia. Some community residents commute to work at Prince Rupert by crossing Prince Rupert Harbour. Westcoast Launch is the water-taxi provider for residents and visitors. The taxi runs a few days per week, the schedule is season dependent. /> Community residents voted against the installation of a water filtration system in 2011 per concerns of "unaffordable user fees", and have been advised since 1988 to boil their water. + +History +Dodge Cove was named in 1907 by the Canadian Department of Marine and Fisheries, Ottawa, after George Blanchard Dodge of the Dominion Land Survey, who had surveyed Prince Rupert Harbour in 1906 for the Canadian federal government. The community was built over a Tsimshian village named Kanagatsiyot, which occupied the location for thousands of years. According to the mythology of the Tsimshian, this village was the birthplace of Txamsem, the Tsimshian trickster. Circa 1915, a salted herring business was run in Dodge Cove by Lionel Crippen. + +Today + +Ferry service proposal +In March 2015, a proposal for a commercial ferry service between Prince Rupert and Dodge Cove, Oona River and Hunt's Inlet was presented to Des Nobels, the director of Dodge Cove, and Karl Bergman, director of Oona River. The proposal was based upon a request by the Skeena-Queen Charlotte Regional District for a report to be devised to look into the potential of a ferry service, which was researched and written by researcher Debra Febril. The community directors then proceeded to engage in their communities to determine interest among the people using a Community Needs Assessment Survey. + +The proposal delineates year-round ferry service with a minimum of four weekly round-trips to Dodge Cove and three to Oona River and Hunt's Inlet. Vessel size was recommended by the regional district to carry at least 12 passengers along with additional room for freight and cargo. The report summarized that the respective communities and region would directly benefit from such a ferry service, and that the provision of a reliable, affordable and sustainable ferry system would be reliant upon balancing the needs of private and public entities. Annual revenue projections for the proposed ferry service to Dodge Cove are estimated to be $18,720–$22,464 for round-trip service five days a week, and around $86,112 for the round-trip service to Oona River and Hunts Inlet. + +Proposed LNG facility +In September 2015, Dodge Cove residents voiced concerns about the proposed construction of a liquefied natural gas (LNG) facility by Aurora LNG on Digby Island. Aurora LNG is a joint venture among Nexen Energy and INPEX Gas British Columbia Ltd. Residents expressed concerns due to the proposed site's close proximity to the community and for the potential of the project to adversely affect the area's water supply and wetlands. Residents were also concerned about the facility separating the community from Lake Wahl. One survey found that 96% of the community's residents were opposed to the proposed project. Residents cited standards developed by the Society of International Gas Tanker and Terminal Operators, which recommend a 2.2 mile minimum hazard-free zone from LNG operations and carriers such as tankers, and demanded that the Government of British Columbia adhere to these standards. + +In September 2014, 36 Dodge Cove residents signed a petition that was against the proposed facility and operations, which stated in part that the project would "alter our lives and community irreparably". Community director Des Nobels stated that preliminary activities performed by Nexen Energy, which is working to determine the feasibility of the LNG operation and performing environmental assessments, has disrupted life for community members due to helicopter traffic over the community. In response, Nexen stated that they would meet with community members regarding this matter. + +References + +Further reading + +External links + + Dodge Cove Arts Guild + +Unincorporated settlements in British Columbia +Populated places in the North Coast Regional District +Designated places in British Columbia +Populated places established in 1907 +1907 establishments in British Columbia +In linguistics, a triphone is a sequence of three consecutive phonemes. Triphones are useful in models of natural language processing where they are used to establish the various contexts in which a phoneme can occur in a particular natural language. + +See also + + Diphone + +References + +Natural language processing +Phonology +Government House of Nova Scotia is the official residence of the lieutenant governor of Nova Scotia, as well as that in Halifax of the Canadian monarch. It stands in the provincial capital at 1451 Barrington Street; unlike other provincial Government Houses in Canada, this gives Nova Scotia's royal residence a prominent urban setting, though it is still surrounded by gardens. + +History +Construction of Government House was ordered in 1800 by then governor Sir John Wentworth to replace the existing Government House that stood on the present location of Province House, with the cornerstone of the former being laid on 1 September of that year. The site had originally been purchased by the Crown as the location for a new colonial legislature, but it was eventually deemed to be too far removed from the capital, and was allocated for use as a viceregal residence instead. The Governor and his family moved into the still incomplete building in 1805. + +On 8 March 1834, Lieut. Col. James Fullarton, C.B., K. H. died at Government House and was later buried at the Old Burying Ground (Halifax, Nova Scotia). + +The first royal resident was Prince Edward, Prince of Wales (later King Edward VII), in 1860, who was followed by others such as Prince Arthur, Duke of Connaught and Strathearn, in 1869 (he would also serve as Governor General of Canada); Prince George (later King George V) in 1883 and 1901; Prince Albert in 1913 and again in 1939 as King George VI, along with his wife, Queen Elizabeth, who returned as the Queen Mother in 1967 for the Canadian Centennial and in 1979; their daughters, Princess Elizabeth, Duchess of Edinburgh, in 1951 and again in 1959, 1976, 1994 and 2010 as Queen Elizabeth II, and Princess Margaret, Countess of Snowdon, in 1958 and 1988; Elizabeth II's children, Prince Andrew in 1985 and Prince Edward in 1987, as well as Prince Charles, Prince of Wales, in 1983, accompanied by Diana, Princess of Wales. The mansion was also the gathering place for the various ministers of finance attending the 1995 G7 summit in Halifax. + +A fire erupted in the mansion's attic in 1854; however, the blaze was kept under control due to the fireproofing precautions taken during the design and construction of the edifice. Government House was not well maintained in the latter half of the 20th century. As one of the oldest official residences in Canada, Government House was designated a National Historic Site of Canada in 1982. The following year, the provincial government, under the Heritage Property Act, listed the house and its gardens as a Provincially Registered Property, in recognition of its Georgian architecture and its association with the various lieutenant governors since 1805 and the Canadian monarchy. The property was not well maintained, regardless, and it underwent extensive renovation and restoration for three years prior to the end of 2008; the building was rededicated by Queen Elizabeth II on 28 June 2010. At the same time, a new Royal Key was inaugurated; it was presented to the Queen and then returned at the end of her tour of Canada, so as to be granted to future lieutenant governors. Nova Scotia's Government House is presently the oldest viceregal residence in North America. + +Use +Government House is owned by the King in Right of Nova Scotia and is open to the public at certain times. It is also where members of the Canadian Royal Family and visiting foreign dignitaries are greeted and often stay while in Halifax, as well as the location of numerous royal and viceroyal events, such as the bestowing of provincial awards or inductions into the Order of Nova Scotia, luncheons, dinners, receptions, and speaking engagements. It is at Government House that the lieutenant governor will drop the writs of election, swear-in new members of the Executive Council, and hold audience with his premier. In 2016 the Lieutenant Governor of Nova Scotia John James Grant hosted the annual conference of the Governor General, Lieutenant Governors and Territorial Commissioners at Government House. + +Architecture and art +Government House's overall style is one of Georgian with hints of Adam, elements of the main and rear facades having been taken from a book of house plans published in 1795 by George Richardson, a former employee of Robert and James Adam. Many of the materials, however, were acquired locally; the stone came from Antigonish, Bedford Basin, Cape Breton, Lockeport, Lunenburg, and Pictou, brick from Dartmouth, and pine from the Annapolis Valley, Cornwallis, and Tatamagouche. Imported materials came from New Brunswick, Newfoundland, England, and Scotland; notably, the marble fireplace mantles were made in London. These adorned an interior arranged for both entertaining and state business, including a drawing room, dining room, and ballroom for formal entertaining, as well a suite for the governor, his family, and servants. At the time, Nova Scotia had no equal in design and decoration. Hung throughout the building are a number of portraits by Robert Field. + +See also + Government Houses in Canada + Government Houses of the British Empire and Commonwealth +List of oldest buildings and structures in Halifax, Nova Scotia + +References + +Further reading + +External links + +Buildings and structures in Halifax, Nova Scotia +Politics of Nova Scotia +National Historic Sites in Nova Scotia +Nova Scotia +Tourist attractions in Halifax County, Nova Scotia +Houses in Nova Scotia +Royal residences in Canada +Harry Everett "Bud" Abell (born December 21, 1940) is a former American football linebacker in the American Football League (AFL) for the Kansas City Chiefs. He played college football at the University of Missouri. + +Early years +Abell was born in Kansas City, Missouri and attended Southeast High School. He accepted a football scholarship from the University of Missouri. As a sophomore, he became a starter at right defensive end. He was a two-way player and also was an offensive end. + +Professional career +Abell was selected by the Kansas City Chiefs in the 23rd round (178th overall) of the 1964 AFL Draft with a future draft pick, which allowed the team to draft him before his college eligibility was over. He was also selected by the Dallas Cowboys in the 17th round (228th overall) of the 1964 NFL Draft. + +On June 1, 1965, he signed with the Kansas City Chiefs. He was converted into an outside linebacker during training camp. On September 2, the Chiefs claimed rookie Chuck Hurston, placing Abell on the injury deferred list to make room for him. + +In 1966, he participated in his first regular season as a part of the team that won the AFL Championship and that played in Super Bowl I. The next year, he became a starter after E. J. Holub was injured. + +In 1968, he returned to a reserve role after he was passed on the depth chart by rookie Jim Lynch. That season he recorded his only 2 career interceptions. + +On August 25, 1969, he was traded to the Denver Broncos in exchange for a conditional draft choice (not exercised). He was released by the Broncos on September 9. + +References + +1940 births +Living people +Players of American football from Kansas City, Missouri +American football linebackers +Missouri Tigers football players +Kansas City Chiefs players +American Football League players +Susette La Flesche, later Susette LaFlesche Tibbles and also called Inshata Theumba, meaning "Bright Eyes" (c. 1854–1903), was a well-known Native American writer, lecturer, interpreter, and artist of the Omaha tribe in Nebraska. La Flesche was a progressive who was a spokesperson for Native American rights. She was of Ponca, Iowa, French, and Anglo-American ancestry. In 1983, she was inducted into the Nebraska Hall of Fame. In 1994, she was inducted into the National Women's Hall of Fame. + +Early life and education + +Susette, also called Inshata Theumba (Bright Eyes), was born in Bellevue, Nebraska in about 1854, the eldest daughter of five children born to Joseph LaFlesche and his wife Mary Gale. Joseph was the son of the French fur trader Joseph La Flesche, a wealthy immigrant from France, and his Ponca wife, Waoowinchtcha, reportedly a relative of the Omaha chief Big Elk. After some years of trading with the Omaha while working with Peter Sarpy, the younger La Flesche was adopted as a son by the chief Big Elk. He named him successor to his position. La Flesche (Iron Eyes) became the last traditional chief of the Omaha. + +The La Flesches were a "prominent, affluent and acculturated family" among the Omaha. La Flesche and Mary stressed the importance of education for their children: Louis, Susette, Rosalie, Marguerite and Susan, and "favored assimilation". They thought it offered the best future for their people. The La Flesche family supported the missionary schools and white teachers for their children. + +As chief, Joseph had a second wife Ta-in-ne (Elizabeth Esau), an Omaha woman, and they married around 1856. The following year, 1857, their son Francis La Flesche was born, followed by other children. + +From 1862 to 1869, La Flesche attended Presbyterian Mission Boarding Day School on the reservation where she learned to read, write, and speak in English as well as cook and sew. After the Presbyterian mission school on the reservation closed, Susette La Flesche attended a girls' school in Elizabeth, New Jersey, where she was followed by her younger sisters Marguerite and Susan. Her writing skills were recognized and encouraged during her school years. + +Susette's siblings also became professionals: Susan LaFlesche Picotte became the first Native American physician and founded the first privately funded hospital on an Indian reservation; and Rosalie La Flesche Farley became a financial manager for the Omaha nation, leasing grazing land that was excess to individual household needs. Marguerite LaFlesche Picotte was a teacher on the Yankton Sioux reservation, having married Charles Picotte. Their half-brother Francis LaFlesche became an ethnologist for the Smithsonian Institution, writing about the Omaha and the Osage, and making original recordings of their traditional songs. + +Career +As a young woman, Susette La Flesche became more interested in politics and soon graduated and learned how to speak English. She first worked as a teacher on the Omaha reservation. She had always wanted to become a teacher and after graduating from school at the Elizabeth Institute for Young Ladies in New Jersey, she returned home and was told she could not teach on the reservation. She then wrote to the Indian Commissioner who told her she could not teach without a certificate. She then requested the Indian agent on the Omaha reservation if she could leave the reservation so she could take the exam to get her certificate. He refused to give her permission but she left anyway and asked the Superintendent of Schools to give her the teaching tests. She received her certificate, submitted it to the Indian Commissioner who refused her again and then told her that she needed a "certificate of 'good moral character'" (Starita 2010). She then wrote her teachers at the New Jersey school and received letters documenting her "good moral character." She then dutifully sent her letters and certificate to the Indian Commissioner. He did not respond. She wrote again and threatened to take this story to the newspapers to which he finally relented and gave her a building and $20 a month. She gathered some Omaha students and became the first American Indian teacher on the Omaha reservation. She also wanted to teach them music and so she saved and bought an organ (paraphrased from Starita 2010). + +Since her paternal grandmother and uncle were Ponca, she and her father traveled to Oklahoma to investigate conditions after the tribe's forced removal from Nebraska to Indian Territory. (The US government had reassigned the Ponca land in Nebraska to the Great Sioux Reservation.) + +La Flesche worked with Thomas Tibbles, an editor with the Omaha World Herald, to publicize the poor conditions they found at the southern reservation: the Ponca had been moved too late in the year to plant crops, the government was late with supplies and promised infrastructure and improvements, and malaria was endemic in the area. Nearly one-third of the tribe died within the first two years as a result of the journey and conditions, among them the oldest son of Chief Standing Bear. The chief left the Indian Territory with some followers to bury his son in the traditional homeland of Nebraska. They were arrested and confined to Fort Omaha, by order of the federal government. Tibbles' coverage of the chief's imprisonment was instrumental in gaining Standing Bear pro bono legal services by two prominent defense attorneys, including the counsel for the Union Pacific Railroad. Standing Bear filed a suit of habeas corpus against the US government, challenging the grounds for his arrest. + +In 1879 La Flesche acted as Standing Bear's interpreter during his lawsuit at Fort Omaha, Nebraska. She also testified as to conditions on the reservation in Indian Territory. Standing Bear successfully challenged the lack of grounds of his arrest and imprisonment, arguing before the United States District Court that Indians were persons under the law, and had all the rights of US citizens. Tibbles attended and reported the case, which gained national attention. Standing Bear v. Crook (1879) was a landmark civil rights case, with the judge deciding that Indians had certain rights as "persons" and citizens under the US constitution. She began serving as a witness and interpreter on other cases where Native Americans sued the U.S. government. After this trial, she received the Indian name Bright Eyes. + +Following the trial, La Flesche and her half-brother Francis accompanied Standing Bear and others on a speaking tour of the eastern United States, organized by Tibbles. In addition to taking turns interpreting for Standing Bear, Susette La Flesche spoke in her own right. During the tour, La Flesche and Tibbles also testified in Washington in 1880 before a Congressional committee about the Ponca removal. La Flesche spoke for the rights of Native Americans. They met prominent American writers, such as the poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow and writer Helen Hunt Jackson. In 1881 Jackson published a book about US treatment of Native Americans entitled A Century of Dishonor, and in 1884 the novel Ramona, based on Indian issues in Southern California. Longfellow reportedly said of La Flesche, "This could be Minnehaha", referring to the legendary Indian heroine in his poem The Song of Hiawatha. + +In 1887, La Flesche and Tibbles, by then married, accompanied Standing Bear on a 10-month speaking tour of England and Scotland. La Flesche continued to act as the chief's interpreter. They were heard by many who wanted to learn more about the American Indian issues in the United States. + +After their return to Nebraska, LaFlesche and Tibbles became interested in the growing Ghost Dance movement and issues among the restive Sioux bands. They went to the Pine Ridge Agency in 1890 and wrote about its conditions, as well as the Wounded Knee massacre. This work was likely the peak of LaFlesche's journalism career. She continued to publish articles and columns in papers in Nebraska, including her husband's populist The Independent. + +Marriage +La Flesche and Thomas Tibbles were married in July 1881, after his wife died. During the next 14 years, the couple spent some time in Washington, DC (1893–1895), but lived mostly in Nebraska. While in Washington, La Flesche wrote and lectured on Native American issues. For instance, she gave an address to the Association for the Advancement of Women, on "The Position, Occupation, and Culture of Indian Women." + +In Nebraska, she spent time farming on her allotment of land as a tribal member on the Omaha Reservation and also writing. Her husband managed her father's property. They lived there most of the time. + +Literary works + "Nedawi: An Indian Story from Real Life" was published in the children's magazine St. Nicholas in 1881. "Nedawi" is thought to be the first short story written by an American Indian which was not based on legend. +"Omaha Legends and Tent Stories", "Wide Awake" (1883), in Karen L. Kilcup, ed. Native American Women's Writing c. 1800–1924: An Anthology + With Fannie Reed Griffin, Bright Eyes co-authored the book Oo-mah-ha Ta-wa-tha (1898), and illustrated it. + Introduction to the novel Ploughed-Under: The Story of an Indian Chief, as Told by Himself (1881), by William Justin Harsha. She also illustrated the book, which she edited. + Introduction to The Ponca Chiefs, by Thomas Tibbles. + La Flesche wrote columns for the Omaha World Herald and her husband's Populist paper, The Independent. + +Legacy and honors + 1903, after her death, LaFlesche Tibbles was eulogized in the US Senate. + 1983, in recognition of her role as a spokesperson and writer about her people, Susette ("Bright Eyes") LaFlesche Tibbles was inducted into the Nebraska Hall of Fame. +1994, induction into the National Women's Hall of Fame. + +References + +Peyer, Bernd. (1991). The Singing Spirit, Univ of Arizona Press. +Starita, Joe. (2010). "I Am A Man", St Martin's Griffin. + +Further reading + Clark, Jerry E. and Martha Ellen Webb, "Susette and Susan LaFlesche: Reformer and Missionary", in Being and Becoming Indian: Biographical Studies of North American Frontiers, ed. James A. Clifton, Dorsey, 1989, pp. 137–150 + Green, Norma Kidd. Iron Eye's Family: The Children of Joseph LaFlesche. Lincoln, Neb. 1969. + Wilson, Dorothy Clarke. Bright Eyes: The Story of Susette LaFlesche, An Omaha Indian. New York: McGraw Hill, 1974. + Marion Marsh Brown, Susette La Flesche: advocate for Native American rights 1992 + Margaret Crary, Susette La Flesche: Voice of the Omaha Indians, 1973 + +External links + , Nebraska State Historical Society + +1850s births +1903 deaths +Native American activists +Native American writers +La Flesche family +Writers from Nebraska +19th-century American writers +19th-century American women writers +19th-century Native American women +19th-century American women artists +20th-century Native American women +20th-century American artists +20th-century Native American artists +Native American women writers +Native American women artists +The Pomme de Terre River (pronounced pohm de TEHR) is a tributary of the Osage River in southwestern Missouri in the United States. Via the Osage and Missouri rivers, it is part of the watershed of the Mississippi River. + +Pomme de terre is French for potato, a food Indians harvested in the area. Before the French explorers, the Osage people, who were historically indigenous to the region, had called it a name meaning Big Bone River, referring to the fossils of mastodons and other ancient creatures which they found along its eroding banks. + +Course +The Pomme de Terre River is formed in Greene County in the Ozarks by the confluence of its short north and south forks, which rise in Webster and Greene counties, respectively. The river flows generally northward through Dallas, Polk, Hickory and Benton counties, past the town of Hermitage. In Polk County it collects the short Little Pomme de Terre River, which rises in Greene County and flows generally northwestwardly. In Hickory County a U.S. Army Corps of Engineers dam causes the river to form Pomme de Terre Lake. It enters the Osage River as an arm of Truman Lake, which is formed by a dam on the Osage. + +See also +List of Missouri rivers + +References + +Rivers of Missouri +Rivers of Benton County, Missouri +Rivers of Dallas County, Missouri +Rivers of Greene County, Missouri +Rivers of Hickory County, Missouri +Rivers of Polk County, Missouri +Rivers of Webster County, Missouri +Bodies of water of the Ozarks +Tributaries of the Missouri River +The Elizabethan Club is a social club at Yale University named for Queen Elizabeth I and her era. Its profile and members tend toward a literary disposition, and conversation is one of the Club's chief purposes. + +The Elizabethan Club's collection of 16th- and 17th-century books and artifacts include Shakespearean folios and quartos, first editions of Milton's Paradise Lost, Spenser's Faerie Queene, and Francis Bacon's Essayes, all locked in the club's vault. The collection is only available for inspection at certain times, or to researchers upon request at Yale's Beinecke Library. Tea is served daily during the semester and members may invite guests on specified days. The Club accepts female and male undergraduates, graduate students, faculty and staff. + +History + +The club was founded in 1911 by Alexander Smith Cochran, a member of the Yale Class of 1896 and Wolf's Head Society. As an undergraduate he had regretted the lack of a congenial atmosphere in which to discuss literature and the arts with classmates and faculty. In 1910 he began to assemble a small but exceptional collection of first and early editions of the Elizabethan and Jacobean plays that he had studied with William Lyon Phelps, and in 1911 he offered the collection to Yale as the central point of interest for a club where conversation – and tea – would be available every afternoon. Cochran also provided a clubhouse, with quarters for a resident steward, and a generous endowment of $100,000. His portrait hangs above the fireplace in the Vault Room, and his birthday (28 February) is marked by an annual Founder’s Dinner. The life portrait of the Virgine Queene in the Tea Room, attributed to Federico Zuccari, came with the founder’s original gift. Began during the literary renaissance at the university between 1909 and 1920, the club attracted such book collectors as Phelps, Chauncey Brewster Tinker, and John Berdan. + +Cochran’s gift of 141 folios and quartos includes, among other important volumes, the first four Shakespeare Folios, one of the three known copies of the 1604 Hamlet, and the copy of Ben Jonson’s Works (1616) inscribed by the author to his friend Francis Young. Over the years additional volumes of equal importance, such as first or early quartos of all the major dramatists, have been acquired by gift and purchase, and the entire collection now numbers around 300 volumes. A catalog of this collection, The Elizabethan Club of Yale University and Its Library, prepared by Yale's Stephen Parks, was published in 1986 and considerably expanded in a 2011 edition. The club vault also holds a sample of 16th-century documents, manuscripts (for example, a letter of condolence from Queen Elizabeth to her friend Lady Southwell, 15 October 1598) and medals (one celebrating the defeat of the Spanish Armada in 1588), as well as various artifacts (a lock of Byron’s hair; a snuff box carved from a mulberry tree planted by Shakespeare at New Place, his home at Stratford; and a guest book signed by many of the club's visitors). + +Documents relating to the club's organization and activities, including a tradition of formal correspondence written in Latin to the Signet Society at Harvard, are viewable at the online Yale Manuscripts and Archives Collection. + +Activity +The club is dedicated to conversation, tea, the art of the book, and literature, focused on—but not exclusively of—the Elizabethan era. During the academic year the clubhouse is open daily for the use of its members from 8 in the morning until 10 in the evening. Tea is served every afternoon during termtime from four until six. A 1920 observer noted among "certain hopeful signs of the times, current British and American periodicals are neatly lined up on tables, configurations of other little tables, sofas and chairs provide many nooks for quiet discussion or reading, and upstairs even includes a room dedicated almost entirely to archives of Punch, the former English magazine of humor and satire. Outside, the club has a deep back garden with a pavilion, understated elegant plantings, and featuring a bust of the Bard himself, to facilitate the enjoyments of finger sandwiches, cookies and croquet." + +From time to time, the club sponsors special events such as Club Nights with a speaker and discussion; seasonal parties and teas; and an annual lecture honoring Maynard Mack (1909-2001), former president of the club, longtime faculty member and illustrious Shakespeare scholar. Mack lecturers have included Joanne Akalaitis, John Barton, Tony Church, Lisa Harrow, Michael Kahn, Mark Lamos, Carey Perloff, Michael Billington and Sam Waterston. + +The club also has underwritten the production of a small series of books, published by the Yale University Press. Indeed, publishing specialized works relating to the club's mission has been a practice dating back to its early years. + +Membership +Membership in the Elizabethan Club, by invitation only, includes undergraduates (15 members are elected per class year; however, freshmen are not admitted; accordingly there are at most 45 current undergraduates at any time), graduate students, university staff, and faculty. The affairs of the club are managed by a self-perpetuating Board of Incorporators (six members of the university) that meets twice a year in October and May and by an elected Board of Governors that meets monthly. It is not a "final society", in that membership in another Yale secret society, association, or club is not a bar to also having club membership. + +Architecture + + The Elizabethan Club is housed in a landmarked well-preserved Federal building, the Leverett Griswold House, built circa 1775 and renovated between 1810-1815 and 1995-1996. It was previously owned successively by the Leverett Griswold and Wilbur Gilbert families. + Kenneth Boroson, AIA, of Kenneth Boroson Architects, LLC designed an addition and rear garden in 1995-1996. + Architectural historian Patrick Pinnell in his 1999 history of Yale's campus says this "crisp little white house... shows off an early example of a gable fronting the street, rather than being turned parallel to it... predicting the temple-front individuality of Greek Revival..." It provides the only remaining Federal-era aspect on this stretch of College Street, one that Pinnell discusses as having been in the mid 19th century a residential street. + The clubhouse, acquired by the founder in 1911, bears National Historic, State Historic and City Historic designations. + +Books + + The Lizzie informally fosters appreciation for the Art of the Book and of fine printing and typography, befitting a campus with a number of working old-fashioned undergraduate presses. + Guests sign in upon entering; consequently, the Lizzie's collection of these guestbooks includes autographs of prominent literary, arts, and other figures who have visited. Among these are Theodore Roosevelt, Edward Heath, Robert Frost, (a frequent visitor) Bertrand Russell, Joseph Conrad, W.B. Yeats, Eva Le Gallienne, Diana Rigg, Allen Ginsberg, William Carlos Williams, Dr. Ruth Westheimer, and Kenneth Branagh. + On the second floor, the Map Room contains a collection of books about Shakespeare and the Elizabethan period, most of them published in the middle of the twentieth century. In the Study Room there are bound copies of Punch from 1847 to 1985, and in the Governors Room numerous bound sets of British and European authors, plus a small collection of books presented to the club by authors who are members. + +Notable members + + Notable members today include Strobe Talbott, Richard H. Brodhead, Daniel Yergin, Jonathan Brewster Bingham, Hilton Als, Carlos Eire, James Franco, John Lewis Gaddis, Henry Louis Gates, Linda Greenhouse, Paul Kennedy, Anthony Kronman, Joyce Maynard, Steven Smith, Jeremy Strong, and Lauren Willig. Recently deceased members include Harold Bloom, Vincent Scully, and David Swensen. + Club founder Alexander Smith Cochran, heir to a carpet manufacturer, led an eventful life. Referred to on the eve of his "secret" marriage to the Polish opera singer Ganna Walska as "New York's Richest Bachelor", within a short period, he was contesting the marriage (he was her third of six husbands) as illegal, claiming her first husband was still living when Cochran married her, and they separated. Cochran's exploits socially, financially and in sailing (he headed America's Cup syndicates) were widely covered in newspapers of the day. + Cole Porter, a member himself according to some sources, although others say he was rejected for membership and responded with satirical compositions, made reference to the club in two of his songs: "A Member of the Yale Elizabethan Club", a satirical description of a self-absorbed "Lizzie" member, and "Since We've Met," in which he satirizes a prudish couple, writing "We shrink at any oath except a soft 'Beelzebub.' / We're out-Elizabething the Elizabethan Club." + +Notes + + Holden, Reuben A. Yale: A Pictorial History. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1967. + Parks, Stephen. The Elizabethan Club of Yale University and Its Library: Centenary Edition. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2011. + Havens, Earle. Gloriana: Monuments and Memorials of the Reign of Queen Elizabeth I. New Haven: The Elizabethan Club, 2006. + Newton, Alfred Edward. ''A Magnificent Farce: And Other Diversions of a Book-collector. Boston: The Atlantic Monthly Press, 1921. P. 125. + +External links + + + +Culture of Yale University +Clubs and societies in the United States +Organizations established in 1911 +Literary societies +Raymond Lewis Abruzzese Jr. (October 27, 1937 – August 22, 2011) was an American college and professional football player. + +Abruzzese was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. A defensive back, he played college football at the University of Alabama, and played professionally in the American Football League (AFL) for the Buffalo Bills from 1962 through 1964, when the Bills won the AFL Championship game, 20–7, over the defending AFL champion San Diego Chargers. He played for the AFL's New York Jets in 1965 and 1966. + +Abruzzese died in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, aged 73. He was one of at least 345 NFL players to be diagnosed after death with chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), caused by repeated hits to the head. + +References + +See also +List of American Football League players + +1937 births +2011 deaths +Players of American football from Philadelphia +American football safeties +Alabama Crimson Tide football players +Buffalo Bills players +New York Jets players +American Football League players +Holy Family High School in Broomfield, Colorado, is a Roman Catholic college-preparatory high school located in the technology corridor between Denver and Boulder. The school is operated under the auspices of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Denver. + +History +Holy Family High School was established in 1922 as a parish high school. The first commencement was held in 1926. Staffed by the Sisters of Loretto and dedicated lay teachers, the school added a second building in 1956 to meet the demands of increasing enrollment. + +In 1958 Holy Family changed its affiliation from a parish high school to an archdiocesan secondary school and was one of four Catholic high schools to serve the urban geographical region of North Denver. By the 1980s it was apparent that expansion to a new location was essential to continue its mission of educating young men and women. A site was secured by the school and the Archdiocese of Denver and the groundbreaking was held in March 1998. The doors to the new campus building were opened in August 1999 in sprawling Broomfield, Colorado. The new facility features a chapel, 22 classrooms, four science laboratories, a multimedia library, a wireless network, two technology centers, athletic practice and playing fields, and the lighted Mike G. Gabriel football stadium. + +In 2008, a new larger than life statue of the Holy Family was dedicated. In 2020 Holy Family added a 34,000 sq ft. addition including Engineering rooms, classrooms, a new Auxiliary gym, and renovated many of its other facilities. Holy Family has 65 faculty members, giving the school a 11:1 student/faculty ratio. Over 75% of the faculty holds a Master's or other advanced degrees. Over $1 million of tuition assistance and scholarships were awarded for the 2020-2021 school year. (42% of the student body). + +Academics +A total of 30 credits are required for graduation for the class of 2023. An Honors Diploma is earned by acquiring 30 or more credits with a 4.0 GPA or better in a curriculum which includes at least eight honors or advanced placement courses and completion of a summary project. Apostolic Ministry is required of each student, beginning with service to family, school and culminating with two years of service experience outside the school. Spiritual Retreats are held for every class level and Holy Family juniors participate in the Kairos retreat program. Prayer is an integral part of the daily experience. Masses are celebrated monthly for the entire school community. Optional weekly masses are celebrated on Thursday mornings. Small group masses are available frequently. + +Athletics +The Holy Family Tigers compete in the Colorado High School Activities Association (CHSAA) at the 4A level of the Northern Colorado Athletic Conference. Team members must be academically eligible to participate. The Tigers have earned state titles in girls' basketball (2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2013, and 2014), boys' basketball (1976, 1998, and 2014), football (2002 and 2005), softball (2006 and 2018), girls' cross country (2012), girls' soccer (2021), and baseball (2010, 2013, and 2014). Fall sports: cross country, football, boys' golf, soccer, spirit team, softball, volleyball. Winter sports: girls' and boys' basketball, wrestling, Girls' Swimming, and spirit team. Spring sports: baseball, boys' and girls' lacrosse, track and field, girls' soccer, girls' tennis, girls' golf. + +Notable alumni +Tom Tancredo, former five-term Republican U.S. Representative of Colorado's 6th congressional district from 1999 to 2009, 2008 presidential candidate, and Constitution candidate for Governor in 2010 election. + +References + +External links + + +Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Denver +Educational institutions established in 1922 +Catholic secondary schools in Colorado +Schools in Broomfield, Colorado +1922 establishments in Colorado +The Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) GmbH (English: German Development Cooperation (GIZ)), often simply shortened to GIZ, is the main German development agency. It is headquartered in Bonn and Eschborn and provides services in the field of international development cooperation and international education work. The organization's self-declared goal is to deliver effective solutions that offer people better prospects and sustainably improve their living conditions. + +According to the OECD, Germany’s total ODA (USD 35 billion, preliminary data) increased in 2022 due to an increase in in-donor refugee costs and increased contributions to international organisations. It represented 0.83% of gross national income (GNI). + +GIZ's main commissioning party is Germany's Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ). Other commissioners include European Union institutions, the United Nations, the private sector, and governments of other countries. In its projects GIZ works with partners in national governments, actors from the private sector, civil society and research institutions. Additionally, in cooperation with the German Federal Employment Agency, GIZ operates the Centre for International Migration and Development (CIM), an agency specialized on international cooperation activities related to global labor mobility. + +GIZ was established on 1 January 2011, through the merger of three German international development organizations: the Deutscher Entwicklungsdienst (DED), the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Technische Zusammenarbeit (GTZ), and Internationale Weiterbildung und Entwicklung (InWEnt). The merger was overseen by Dirk Niebel, federal development minister from 2009 to 2013. His predecessor had previously tried and failed to merge the DED with the KfW. GIZ is one of the world's largest development agencies, with a business volume in excess of €3.1 billion in 2019 as well as 22,199 employees spread over more than 120 countries. + +Organisation + +GIZ's headquarters are located in Bonn and Eschborn. It also has an office in Berlin and at 16 other locations across Germany. Outside Germany, the company has a representation in Brussels and operates 90 offices around the world. + +Because GIZ is incorporated under German law as a GmbH (limited liability company), it is governed by a management board that acts on behalf of the company's shareholders and is monitored by a supervisory board. Additionally, GIZ also has a board of trustees and a Private Sector Advisory Board. GIZ's management board consists of two managing directors, namely Thorsten Schäfer-Gümbel (Chairperson) and Ingrid-Gabriela Hoven. + +Thorsten Schäfer-Gümbel, a former Social Democrat local politician, was previously one of three managing directors. Prior to him, the inaugural chairperson was Tanja Gönner, a former state-level minister of the Christian Democrats, who left politics during protests against the Stuttgart 21 train station project. She came to GIZ without prior experience in international development. She left GIZ in November 2022 to lead the German industry lobby BDI. + +The Federal Republic of Germany (represented by the Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ) and the Federal Ministry of Finance (BMF)) is GIZ's sole shareholder. The organization is structured into eight corporate units (Corporate Development; Corporate Communications; Legal Affairs and Insurance; Compliance and Integrity; Auditing; Evaluation; Corporate Security; Academy for International Cooperation (AIZ)) and ten departments (Commissioning Parties and Business Development; Sectoral Development; Sector and Global Programmes; Africa; Asia, Latin America, Caribbean; Europe, Mediterranean, Central Asia; International Services; Human Resources). + +GIZ holds a 49% share in sequa gGmbH, the implementing partner of the German business community, in line with the company's objective to foster private sector development and cooperate closely with business chambers and associations abroad. Moreover, GIZ is a member of the European Network of Implementing Development Agencies (EUNIDA), which was co-founded by GTZ in 2000. + +Activities + +GIZ's considers capacity development to be its core discipline. The company's services are grouped into eight so-called "product areas" (as of January 2017): + + Methods: + Advisory services: management of complex projects and programs (Capacity WORKS); development partnerships with the private sector; social impact assessment; + International competency development: e-learning, e-coaching, and e-collaboration; Leadership Development Workshop; key qualifications for international cooperation; strengthening training in partner countries (capacity to build capacity); training specialists and managers from partner organisations; + Networking, dialogue and moderation: network management; alumni networks without borders; twinning (EU administration partnerships); stakeholder dialogues; competition management; knowledge sharing; + Management and logistics: grants; fund management; public procurement; knowledge-based services; evaluation; results-based monitoring; Systemic Quality Improvement (SQI); + Rural Development: + Agricultural policy and food: agricultural policy; rural development; land management; food and nutrition security/right to food; + Agricultural trade, agricultural economy, standards: standards and food safety; agricultural trade; value chains; fisheries, aquaculture, and coastal zones; local and regional development; + Agricultural production and resource use: sustainable use of natural resources and production systems in agriculture; agricultural research, innovations, education and extension; water and agriculture; climate change and agriculture; biological diversity; + Sustainable Infrastructure: + Water: in the field of water, sub-topics include sustainable sanitation and water supply, water policy, water resources management, water and the nexus between water and agriculture; + Energy: basic energy supply services (rural electrification, solar lanterns, etc.), renewable energy; energy efficiency; international energy policy; + Transport and infrastructure: transport policy and infrastructure management; sustainable urban mobility; + Security, Reconstruction and Peace: + Emergency aid and disaster risk management: disaster risk management; food security in the context of conflicts and disasters; reconstruction for crisis prevention; + Peace and security: security sector reform; crisis prevention and peacebuilding; + Social development: + Health: health promotion; improving sexual and reproductive health; strengthening health systems; HIV and health; + Education: quality education for a better future; training and capacity building for teachers; + Social protection: social health protection; strategies to implement social justice; + Governance and Democracy: + Democracy and the rule of law: democracy promotion; good governance, gender; corruption prevention; human rights; law and justice; promoting citizen involvement; + Decentralization and urban development: decentralisation; urban and municipal development; + Public finance and administration: Public finance reform; public administration; strengthening good governance in the extractive sector (e.g. EITI); + Environment and climate change: + Climate change: climate change (implementation of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change); integrated ozone and climate protection; + Natural resource management: forest policy and sustainable forest management; combating desertification (e.g. based on the UN Convention to Combat Desertification); biological diversity (implementation of the UN Convention on Biological Diversity); + Urban and industrial environmental management: waste and recycling management; resource efficient economy; sustainable tourism; + Environmental policy: environmental policy; environmental finance; regional environmental cooperation; green economy; + Economic development and employment: + Labor market and TVET: labour-market oriented TVET systems; skills development for secure livelihoods; promoting sustainable employment and employment policies (including occupational safety and health, labor rights, unionisation, etc.); + Financial system development: microfinance; rural finance, financing agriculture and SMEs; insurance; financial sector stability and capital market development; + Private sector: private sector development; supporting value chains; local and regional economic development; shaping migration; + Economic policy: economic policy advice for sustainable economic development; trade; quality infrastructure and consumer protection; green economy; regional economic integration; + +GIZ has been involved in the creation of various networks, associations and portals, and may carry out or support secretariat functions for some of these for a limited period of time. Examples of such networks and associations that have had some GIZ involvement include: + Renewable Energy Policy Network for the 21st Century (REN21) + BIOPAT + Alumniportal Germany + Sustainable Sanitation Alliance +Other global agendas supported by GIZ include South-South cooperation, i.e. bilateral cooperation between developing countries and emerging economies, and triangular cooperation between developing countries as beneficiaries, emerging economies as "new donors" and traditional donors, e.g. Germany, as contributors of expertise. + +GIZ works closely with the German government-owned development bank KfW, which is based in Frankfurt. While GIZ implements those projects on behalf of the BMZ that belong to "technical cooperation", i.e. capacity development, the KfW implements those BMZ projects belonging to "financial cooperation". + +GIZ is currently represented in the SuRe® Stakeholder Council. SuRe® – The Standard for Sustainable and Resilient Infrastructure is a global voluntary standard which integrates key criteria of sustainability and resilience into infrastructure development and upgrade. SuRe® is developed by GIB Foundation and Natixis as part of a multi-stakeholder process and will be compliant with ISEAL guidelines. + +Finally, GIZ also hosts the Eschborn Dialogue, a two-day event for international experts on a given topic in international cooperation (e.g. "World in motion: mobility, migration, digital change" in 2014 or "Raw materials and resources: growth, values, competition" in 2013). The Eschborn Dialogue has been organized each year since 1988. + +Controversy +In 2021, German troops ended their presence in Afghanistan. Since then, the Taliban have taken over the country and persecuted former staff of foreign states, including former local staff of Germany. This led Germany to allow some local staff to immigrate. However, GIZ continued hiring new local staff in Afghanistan, and was criticised for this in 2022. + +Commissioning Parties + +GIZ mainly operates on behalf of the Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ). At the national level, GIZ, however, is also commissioned by other government departments, e.g. the Federal Foreign Office, the Federal Ministry for the Environment (BMU), or the Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy (BMWi), as well as by German states and municipalities. At the international level, GIZ cooperates with the European Union, UN agencies, other international institutions such as the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria (GFFATM), and foreign governments. The cooperation with private enterprises is an emerging field, promoted under the name of sustainable development. The GIZ is set up with International Services (IS) and the Public Private Partnership (PPP) in this area. + +Staff +In 2012, the GIZ employed 23,614 staff members in ca. 120 countries. Close to 70 percent are local forces that are complemented by development aid workers as well as experts from the Centrum für internationale Migration und Entwicklung that helps to integrate employees into the workforce in developing countries. The majority (80%) of employees is working outside of Germany. + +The GIZ operates in a variety of countries with different security situations. Staff of the GIZ is exposed to the particular security situation of the country they work in and have therefore been exposed to violence in the past including abduction as well as other violent acts (e.g. abduction in Afghanistan in 2015 or fatal assault in Niger in 2018). + +See also + List of development aid agencies + Local Government ICT Network (South Africa) + +References + +External links + + + +International management consulting firms +Management consulting firms of Germany +Appropriate technology organizations +Organisations based in Bonn +Foreign charities operating in Cambodia +Organizations established in 2011 +Second Merkel cabinet +Kenneth Marshall Adamson (born October 12, 1938) is an American former professional football player who was a guard for the Denver Broncos of the American Football League (AFL) from 1960 through 1962. He played college football for the Notre Dame Fighting Itish. Playing with Denver, he was an AFL All-Star in 1961. + +References + +See also + +List of American Football League players + +American Football League All-Star players +1938 births +Living people +Denver Broncos (AFL) players +American football offensive guards +Notre Dame Fighting Irish football players +Players of American football from Phoenix, Arizona +Sir William Mackinnon, 1st Baronet, (13 March 1823 – 22 June 1893) was a Scottish ship-owner and businessman who built up substantial commercial interests in India and East Africa. He established the British-India Steam Navigation Company and the Imperial British East Africa Company. + +Biography + +Early life +He was born in Campbeltown, Argyll, and after starting in the grocery trade there, went to Glasgow and worked for a merchant who had Asian trading interests. + +Career +Mackinnon went to India in 1847 and joined an old schoolfriend, Robert Mackenzie, in the coasting trade, carrying merchandise from port to port around the Bay of Bengal. Together they formed the firm of Mackinnon Mackenzie & Co and Mackinnon chose to make Cossipore the base for his own activities. + +In 1856, he founded the shipping company Calcutta and Burma Steam Navigation Company, which would become British India Steam Navigation Company in 1862. It grew into a huge business trading round the coasts of the Indian Ocean, extending its operations to Burma, the Persian Gulf and the east coast of Africa, from Aden to Zanzibar. + +In 1865 he established Gray, Dawes and Company as a merchant partnership for his nephew Archibald Gray and Edwyn Sandys Dawes (1838–1903), knighted in 1894. The company, founded as a shipping and insurance agency in the City of London, went through several reorganizations and ownership changes, obtaining recognition as a merchant bank in 1915, becoming fully fledged as Gray Dawes Bank in 1973 (sold in 1983), and now known as Gray Dawes Group Ltd. + +In 1888, Mackinnon founded the Imperial British East Africa Company and became its Chairman. The company, supported by the United Kingdom government as a means of establishing British influence in the region, was committed to eliminating the slave trade, prohibiting trade monopoly, and equal treatment for all nations. The company would later be taken over by the British government and became the East Africa Protectorate. + +In 1889, Mackinnon was made 1st Baronet of Strathaird and Loup. + +Mackinnon promoted Henry Morton Stanley's Emin Pasha Relief Expedition, first enlisting Stanley, then writing to government ministers including Lord Iddesleigh, the Foreign Secretary, and enlisting friends to form a committee which could oversee the expedition and meet more than half the cost. In 1891 he founded the Free Church of Scotland East African Scottish Mission. + +Death +He died at the Burlington Hotel in London in 1893 and was buried at Clachan in Kintyre, near his home, Balinakill House. + +Legacy +He and his nephew, Duncan MacNeil, left bequests which were used to start the Mackinnon MacNeil Trust with a mandate to "provide a decent education to deserving Highland lads". + +The trustees purchased the former estate of James Nicol Fleming on Keil Point, Southend, Kintyre, including Keil House, and set up the Kintyre Technical School. After only nine years a fire destroyed the building and the school, renamed Keil School, moved to Helenslee House in Dumbarton where it continued until 2000. + +Following the closure of the school, and the sale of the land, the Mackinnon MacNeil Trust was able to continue to help young people and exists now to give bursaries to students from the Western Highlands and Islands going to university. The Trust is still chaired by a member of the Mackinnon family. + +In 1890, a statue dedicated to Sir William Mackinnon was erected in Mombasa, Kenya. It was later moved to the Dunbarton School in 1964, and finally moved again and re-erected in Campbelltown in 2004. + +References + +Archives +The papers of Sir William Mackinnon (PP MS 1) are held by Archives and Special Collections at the School of Oriental and African Studies, London. + +Further reading +J. Forbes Munro, Maritime Enterprise and Empire: Sir William Mackinnon and His Business Network, 1823–1893 (2003) +John S. Galbraith, Mackinnon and East Africa 1878–1895 (Cambridge 1972) +Sir William Mackinnon +Kintyre Magazine +BI Ship (British India Steam Navigation) site + +1823 births +1893 deaths +Baronets in the Baronetage of the United Kingdom +People from Campbeltown +19th-century Scottish businesspeople +Scottish businesspeople in shipping +Scottish people of the British Empire +Companions of the Order of the Indian Empire +Fellows of the Royal Scottish Geographical Society +British people in colonial India +The following is a list of the highest-income ZCTAs in the United States. ZCTAs or ZIP Code Tabulation Areas are the census equivalent of ZIP codes used for statistical purposes. The reason why regular ZIP codes are not used is because they are defined by routes rather than geographic boundaries. Thus, they have the tendency to overlap and otherwise create difficulties. ZIP Code Tabulations are not exact, they are only near approximations. + +ZCTAs ranked by median household income + +ZCTAs with median household incomes in excess of $150,000 + +ZCTAs ranked by per capita income + +References + +United States demography-related lists +Income in the United States +ZIP code +2nd Battalion, 2nd Marines (2/2) is a light infantry battalion in the United States Marine Corps based out of Marine Corps Base Camp Lejeune, North Carolina. Also known as "The Warlords", it consists of approximately 1,300 Marines and sailors and normally falls under the command of the 2nd Marine Regiment and the 2nd Marine Division. + +The battalion returned home November 2008 from Iraq, returned from Afghanistan in May 2010, returned home March 2012 after deploying for 11 months with the 22d Marine Expeditionary Unit as Battalion Landing Team 2/2 supporting NATO Operation UNIFIED PROTECTOR. The unit then deployed in April 2013, in support of both BSRF and Operation Enduring Freedom. Fox Company returned again from Afghanistan October 2013, while the rest of the battalion returned home August 2013 from the Black Sea Rotational Force. Then again in August 2014, the battalion deployed in support of the SPMAGTF-CR Africa. Returning in January 2015, the unit next deployed to the Pacific region on a UDP, going to Okinawa, Japan; the Philippines; Korea; Thailand; and Singapore. + +Subordinate units +Headquarters & Services Company +Easy Company (Retains former phonetic designation) +Fox Company +Golf Company "Raiders" +Weapons Company + +History + +Early years and World War II +The Second Battalion, Second Marines was activated at Cap-Haitien, Haiti, on July 1, 1925, and assigned to 1st Brigade serving at the time with Garde d’Haiti. Throughout 1925 and 1926, Marines of the battalion were employed to quell political disturbances in Haiti. During the period 1929 through 1933, the battalion assisted in building roads and schools, improving sanitary conditions and training the native Haitian constabulary. Second Battalion was deactivated on January 1, 1933. + +Second Battalion was reactivated on January 14, 1941. On August 9, 1942, the Battle of Guadalcanal began with Marines landing on the Tulagi Island Complex. On October 10, elements of the 2nd Battalion conducted a two-day raid on the villages of Koilotamaria and Garabaus. During January 1943, 2d Battalion participated in the final assault to clear Guadalcanal of the remaining Japanese resistance. For its participation in the battle, it was awarded the Presidential Unit Citation. + +As part of the 2nd Marine Division, 2/2 deployed and was one of three battalions spearheading the attack on Tarawa (along with the 3rd Battalion, 2nd Marines and the 2nd Battalion, 8th Marines). The Japanese resistance was fierce, and the initial losses to the battalion were heavy. The battalion commander, Lt. Col. Herbert R. Amey, Jr., was killed by Japanese machine gun fire before reaching the beach. Throughout the battle, Marines of the battalion distinguished themselves: there were two Navy Cross recipients and numerous lesser medals awarded for individual actions. The battalion was again awarded the Presidential Unit Citation for its heroic assault at Tarawa. The 2nd Battalion conducted similar operations during Saipan, Tinian and Okinawa campaigns. + +In September 1945, the battalion deployed to Nagasaki, Japan as part of the U.S. occupation forces. During June and July 1946, the battalion relocated to Camp Lejeune as part of the post-war reduction of forces. The battalion was deactivated on November 18, 1947. + +Post-war years +With the birth of NATO, the Marine Corps was assigned a new mission and 2/2 was reactivated October 20, 1949. Since its reactivation, the battalion has seen extensive service in joint and combined operations and exercises. + +On July 15, 1958, as part of Landing Force Sixth Fleet, 2/2 landed in Beirut, Lebanon, in order to secure Beirut International Airport. Having accomplished its mission, the battalion redeployed on August 14, 1958. In October 1962, during the Cuban Missile Crisis, the 2nd Battalion deployed to the waters off the coast of Cuba as part of a task force of 40 ships and 20,000 Marines and sailors. When the successful blockade terminated on December 3, 1962, the battalion returned to Camp Lejeune. + +Service in the Mediterranean, the Caribbean, and Okinawa was routine for the 2nd Battalion during the intervening years between 1963 and 1977. On its assignment as a Battalion Landing Team (BLT) in the Mediterranean Sea in 1976, the battalion played a supporting role in Operation Fluid Drive in the rescue of 276 civilians (110 Americans, 60 Britons, and 106 nationals from other countries) from Beirut on June 20, 1976. In February 1979, elements of the battalion (U.S. Air Alert Force) deployed to the Azores on standby alert to reinforce the American embassy in Tehran, Iran. The unit was recalled when dissidents evacuated the embassy. On December 4, 1979, in the face of terrorist attacks on United States citizens at the Naval Station, Roosevelt Roads, Puerto Rico, they deployed to reinforce the Marine barracks. They were withdrawn in April 1980. + +Gulf War and the 1990s +The 1980s were a decade of standard deployments to the four corners of the world. In December 1990, attached to 6th Marine Regiment, the unit deployed to southwest Asia for participation in Operation Desert Shield and Operation Desert Storm. The battalion returned from southwest Asia in April 1991. + +In May 1992, as part of Landing Force Sixth Fleet, 2nd Battalion supported Operation Provide Promise off the coast of the former republics of Yugoslavia. In August 1994, the battalion departed for the Caribbean and Haitian waters for Operation Support Democracy of DaFont. 2nd Battalion, 2nd Marines once again landed in Cap-Haitian on September 20, 1994. Participation in Operation Uphold Democracy lasted until October 1994. A squad from Echo Company engaged in a fire fight with the Haitian police/ military coup. Fourteen Marines led by Lt. Polumbo where engaged and prevailed despite superior numbers and superior cover by the Haitians. One Navy interpreter was wounded, and several Haitians died. + +In April 1996, 2/2 was attached to the 22nd Marine Expeditionary Unit and simultaneously reinforced an American embassy in Monrovia, Liberia, in support of Operation Assured Response and the American embassy in Bangui, Central African Republic, in support of Operation Quick Response. During February 1997, elements of the battalion conducted migrant operations in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, in support of Operation Present Heaven. While attached to the 22nd Marine Expeditionary Unit in August 1998, elements of the battalion, participating in Operation Security Force, reinforced the American housing complex in Tirana, Albania, for 97 days. Upon return from deployment in December 1998, Echo Company was sent to Panama for security and contingency operations in support of USCINCSOUTH from March to May 1999. + +In January 2000, 2/2 was attached to the 26th Marine Expeditionary Unit for deployment in July. While deployed, the battalion participated in exercises in Tunisia, Turkey, and Croatia. + +Global War on Terror + +In January 2002, 2nd Battalion, 2nd Marines formed as the battalion landing team for the 24th Marine Expeditionary Unit, in preparation for the Landing Force 6th/5th Fleet deployment in August. While deployed, the battalion conducted peacekeeping and border interdiction operations in support KFOR during Operation Dynamic Response in Kosovo. In December 2002, the battalion under the command of Combined Joint Task Force – Horn of Africa conducted security operations in Djibouti, in support of Operation Enduring Freedom. During this time, Echo Company played a vital role in maritime interdiction operations off the coast of Yemen. + +While stationed in the Persian Gulf, in March 2003, 2/2 deployed to Iraq to reinforce coalition forces during Operation Iraqi Freedom. Especially notable during this deployment were the events that led to Fox Company's April 10, 2003 recovery of the remains of Sgt. Fernando Padilla-Ramirez a Marine listed as missing during the battle of Al Nasiriyah on March 28,2003. The battalion returned from Iraq in May 2003. During the winter of 2003, the battalion supported Operation Noble Eagle in the homeland defense as the Quick Reaction Force for the II Marine Expeditionary Force. In the spring of 2004 the battalion was assigned to deploy to Iraq in support of Operation Iraqi Freedom II and was designated as Task Force 2nd Battalion, 2nd Marines. + +2nd Battalion, 2nd Marines deployed in March 2004 to Iraq where it was attached to Regimental Combat Team 1, 1st Marine Division and fought in Al Mahmudiya, Al Kharma, the first and second assault in the city of Fallujah, and Al Zadan. Especially notable during this deployment were the events that led to 2nd Lt. Ilario Pantano being charged with two counts of premeditated murder; Pantano was acquitted of these charges. During this deployment the battalion suffered 154 Marines wounded and six killed in action while participating in more than 600 separate engagements of various sizes. + +2/2 was deployed to Iraq in July 2005 when it was attached to Regimental Combat Team 8, 2nd Marine Division, II Marine Expeditionary Force. Their area of operations included the areas between Fallujah and Abu Ghraib. They suffered 16 Marines killed in action. The Warlords returned home to Camp Lejeune in February 2006. 2/2 was deployed on January 6, 2007, till July 2007 as the BLT of the 26th MEU with the USS Batan amphibious group. 2/2 was deployed again to Iraq in April 2008 when it was attached to Regimental Combat Team 5, 2nd Marine Division, II Marine Expeditionary Force. Their area of operations included the areas between Rawah and Al Qaim and many other sites. The Warlords returned home to Camp Lejeune in November 2008. + +In mid-October 2009, 2/2 was deployed to Helmand Province in Afghanistan. They were sent there after undergoing training in the Mojave Desert and in Virginia. During the deployment 2/2 suffered eight Marines killed in action. They returned in May 2010 having participated in ISAF-OEF operations in the far south in the vicinity directly north of Safar Bazaar. In March 2011, 2/2 was deployed on a contingency deployment in support of NATO Operation Unified Protector, as part of the 22d Marine Expeditionary Unit. The Warlords returned home to Camp Lejeune in February 2012 . The 2/2 was deployed for a length of 10 months and conducted numerous bi-lateral training exercises with foreign nations. + +In April 2013, the majority of the battalion deployed in support of the Black Sea Rotational Force, while Fox Company conducted combat operations around Nad Ali and surrounding areas in Helmand Province in support of Operation Enduring Freedom returning later that year. In August 2014, the unit deployed in support of the Special Purpose Marine Air-Ground Task Force – Crisis Response – Africa (SP-MAGTF-CR-AF) and the Black Sea Rotational Force. Conducting training with the Spanish, Italian, French, and other NATO members, the unit returned home in January 2015. + +In February 2016, 2/2 deployed as part of the Unit Deployment Program (UDP) based out of Okinawa. The unit traveled to many countries while deployed, conducting bi-lateral training and ensuring peace and balance within the region. The unit returned home August 2016. In August 2017, 2/2 deployed in support of the SP-MAGTF-CR-AF, Marine Rotational Force-Europe, and the Black Sea Rotational Force, conducting training with Norwegian, Spanish, Italian, and other NATO members. Additionally, 2/2 participated in a large Swedish, Aurora 2017. The unit returned home in March 2018. + +During the fall of 2018, 2/2 was dispatched in support of Operation Trident Juncture, a joint training operation conducted by NATO in Norway. In August of 2019, 2/2 was deployed as part of the UDP of Okinawa, where they traveled to mainland Japan as well as the Philippian islands, and South Korea in order to improve relations and serve as instructors for the local militaries. They returned to Camp Lejeune in February 2020, narrowly avoiding the travel restrictions imposed due to the COVID-19 outbreak. + +During the COVID-19 outbreak, the battalion participated in a UDP to Okinawa, where they forward deployed to Korea and mainland Japan. While in Japan they were the first Marine Corps infantry battalion to participate in a force in force exercise against the Japanese ground self defense force, where they earned the Meritorious Unit Citation for their efforts abroad. + +Awards and honors +  Presidential Unit Citation Streamer with one bronze award star +  Navy Unit Commendation Streamer +  Meritorious Unit Commendation Streamer +  Marine Corps Expeditionary Streamer with one bronze campaign star +  American Defense Service Streamer +  Asia Pacific Campaign Streamer with one silver star and one bronze campaign star +  World War II Victory Streamer +  Navy Occupation Service Streamer with "Asia" and "Europe" clasps +  National Defense Service Streamer with two bronze campaign stars +  Armed Forces Expeditionary Streamer with two bronze campaign stars +  Southwest Asia Service Streamer with two bronze campaign stars. + +See also + +List of United States Marine Corps battalions +Organization of the United States Marine Corps + +Notes + +References + +Web + +Infantry battalions of the United States Marine Corps +Benjamin James Agajanian (August 28, 1919 – February 8, 2018), nicknamed "the Toeless Wonder", was an American football player, primarily a placekicker in the National Football League (NFL), the All-America Football Conference (AAFC) and American Football League (AFL). + +Early life +Born in Santa Ana, California, he graduated from San Pedro High School in the San Pedro community in Los Angeles. A placekicker, he played college football at Compton Junior College and the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque. He served in the U.S. Army Air Forces during World War II as a physical training instructor. While playing in college, Agajanian had four toes of his kicking foot crushed in a work accident and then amputated in 1939, + +Pro football career + +Agajanian played professionally in the National Football League from 1945 through 1959, then in the newly formed American Football League for the Los Angeles/San Diego Chargers in 1960, 1961, and 1964. He also played for the Dallas Texans in 1961 and the Oakland Raiders in 1962. He is one of two players (the other was Hardy Brown) who played in the All-America Football Conference, the American Football League, and the National Football League. + +He was pro football's third kicking specialist (after Jack Manders and Mose Kelsch), booting field goals for 10 different professional teams in the 1940s, 1950s and 1960s, including two NFL champions: the New York Giants in 1956 and the Green Bay Packers in 1961. In the 1956 title game, he went 5-for-6 on extra points and 2-for-3 on field goals, while in the 1960 title game he was perfect on extra points (one) and field goals (three). + +He led the league in field goal attempts in 1947 (24) and 1954 (25) and also led in made field goals (15) in the former. + +Later life +After retiring from the field at age 45, he was the Dallas Cowboys kicking coach for 20 years. He also coached Chicago Bears kicker Mac Percival for the 1968 season. + +Agajanian died in Cathedral City, California, on February 8, 2018, at age 98. His older brother was the late Motorsports promoter J. C. Agajanian. + +See also + + History of the New York Giants (1925–78) + List of American Football League players + History of the Armenian Americans in Los Angeles + +References + +External links + + Ben Agajanian, the oldest living Los Angeles Ram at 96, gets a real kick out of their return to L.A. + + "Ben Agajanian, Square-Shoed Kicking Star, Dies at 98," by RICHARD GOLDSTEIN, The New York Times, Feb. 13, 2018 + +1919 births +2018 deaths +American football placekickers +Players of American football from Los Angeles +Dallas Cowboys coaches +Dallas Texans (AFL) players +Green Bay Packers players +Los Angeles Chargers players +Los Angeles Dons players +New Mexico Lobos football players +New York Giants players +Oakland Raiders players +Philadelphia Eagles players +Pittsburgh Steelers players +San Diego Chargers players +Players of American football from Santa Ana, California +American people of Armenian descent +American Football League players +United States Army Air Forces personnel of World War II +United States Army Air Forces soldiers +San Pedro High School alumni +Cola de mono or Colemono (literally, monkey's tail) is a traditional Chilean drink served around Christmas time. It is similar to a White Russian. + +Although there are many versions of this drink, it contains mainly aguardiente, milk, sugar, coffee, and cloves. A virgin version can be made simply without the alcohol. + +Etymology + +There are several theories surrounding the origin of the name. Since this drink is homemade, it was originally bottled in bottles whose labels were from the company Anís del Mono. Eventually the play on words of cola de mono was created. The more accepted theory, however, is related to President Pedro Montt, nicknamed El Mono Montt, or Monkey Montt. During an evening party, Montt prepared to leave and asked for his revolver, a Colt. He was convinced to stay and continue on with the festivities. After all of the wine was drunk and the guests still thirsty for more, mixed milk, coffee, aguardiente, and sugar. Within time, the drink gained popularity and was dubbed "Colt de Montt", eventually morphing into "Cola de Mono" and later "Colemono", which is the name used in the "RAE" dictionaries and in common speech. + +References + +See also + + + +Chilean alcoholic drinks +Christmas food +A weekend warrior is someone who engages in sports or outdoor pursuits at the weekend. + +Weekend warrior may also refer to: + +Music +Weekend Warrior (album), an album by Biz Markie in 2003 +Weekend Warriors (album), an album by Ted Nugent in 1978 +"Weekend Warrior", a song by Iron Maiden from Fear of the Dark in 1992 +"Weekend Warrior", a song by Ministry from Relapse in 2012 +"Weekend Warriors", a song by Uriah Heep from Head First in 1983 +"Weekend Warriors", a song by A Change Of Pace from Prepare the Masses in 2006 + +Other media +Weekend Warrior, a computer game developed by Pangea Software +Weekend Warriors (film), a 1986 comedy +"Weekend Warriors", an episode of the TV series Psych +Weekend Warriors, a program broadcase by HGTV Canada +Weekend Warriors MMA, a mobile game developed by MDickie + +Other uses +A nickname for the visitors of the Defqon.1 Festival + +See also +A computer fan is any fan inside, or attached to, a computer case used for active cooling. Fans are used to draw cooler air into the case from the outside, expel warm air from inside and move air across a heat sink to cool a particular component. Both axial and sometimes centrifugal (blower/squirrel-cage) fans are used in computers. Computer fans commonly come in standard sizes, such as 92mm, 120mm (most common), 140mm, and even 200220mm. Computer fans are powered and controlled using 3-pin or 4-pin fan connectors. + +Usage of a cooling fan +While in earlier personal computers it was possible to cool most components using natural convection (passive cooling), many modern components require more effective active cooling. To cool these components, fans are used to move heated air away from the components and draw cooler air over them. Fans attached to components are usually used in combination with a heat sink to increase the area of heated surface in contact with the air, thereby improving the efficiency of cooling. Fan control is not always an automatic process. A computer's BIOS can control the speed of the built-in fan system for the computer. A user can even supplement this function with additional cooling components or connect a manual fan controller with knobs that set fans to different speeds. + +In the IBM PC compatible market, the computer's power supply unit (PSU) almost always uses an exhaust fan to expel warm air from the PSU. Active cooling on CPUs started to appear on the Intel 80486, and by 1997 was standard on all desktop processors. Chassis or case fans, usually one exhaust fan to expel heated air from the rear and optionally an intake fan to draw cooler air in through the front, became common with the arrival of the Pentium 4 in late 2000. + +Applications + +Case fan + +Fans are used to move air through the computer case. The components inside the case cannot dissipate heat efficiently if the surrounding air is too hot. Case fans may be placed as intake fans, drawing cooler outside air in through the front or bottom of the chassis (where it may also be drawn over the internal hard drive racks), or exhaust fans, expelling warm air through the top or rear. Some ATX tower cases have one or more additional vents and mounting points in the left side panel where one or more fans may be installed to blow cool air directly onto the motherboard components and expansion cards, which are among the largest heat sources. + +Standard axial case fans are 40, 60, 80, 92, 120, 140, 200 and 220 mm in width and length. As case fans are often the most readily visible form of cooling on a PC, decorative fans are widely available and may be lit with LEDs, made of UV-reactive plastic, and/or covered with decorative grilles. Decorative fans and accessories are popular with case modders. Air filters are often used over intake fans, to prevent dust from entering the case and clogging up the internal components. Heatsinks are especially vulnerable to being clogged up, as the insulating effect of the dust will rapidly degrade the heatsink's ability to dissipate heat. + +PSU fan +While the power supply (PSU) contains a fan with few exceptions, it is not to be used for case ventilation. The hotter the PSU's intake air is, the hotter the PSU gets. As the PSU temperature rises, the conductivity of its internal components decrease. Decreased conductivity means that the PSU will convert more of the input electric energy into thermal energy (heat). This cycle of increasing temperature and decreased efficiency continues until the PSU either overheats, or its cooling fan is spinning fast enough to keep the PSU adequately supplied with comparatively cool air. The PSU is mainly bottom-mounted in modern PCs, having its own dedicated intake and exhaust vents, preferably with a dust filter in its intake vent. + +CPU fan + +Used to cool the CPU (central processing unit) heatsink. Effective cooling of a concentrated heat source such as a large-scale integrated circuit requires a heatsink, which may be cooled by a fan; use of a fan alone will not prevent overheating of the small chip. + +Graphics card fan + +Used to cool the heatsink of the graphics processing unit or the memory on graphics cards. These fans were not necessary on older cards because of their low power dissipation, but most modern graphics cards designed for 3D graphics and gaming need their own dedicated cooling fans. Some of the higher powered cards can produce more heat than the CPU (dissipating up to 350 watts), so effective cooling is especially important. Since 2010, graphics cards have been released with either axial fans, or a centrifugal fan also known as a blower, turbo or squirrel cage fan. + +Chipset fan +Used to cool the heatsink of the northbridge of a motherboard's chipset; this may be needed where the system bus is significantly overclocked and dissipates more power than as usual, but may otherwise be unnecessary. As more features of the chipset are integrated into the central processing unit, the role of the chipset has been reduced and the heat generation reduced also. + +Hard drive cooling +Fans may be mounted next to or onto a hard disk drive for cooling purposes. Hard drives can produce considerable heat over time, and are heat-sensitive components that should not operate at excessive temperatures. In many situations, natural convective cooling suffices, but in some cases fans may be required. These may include: + + Faster-spinning hard disks with greater heat production. ( less expensive drives rotated at speeds up to 7,200 RPM; 10,000 and 15,000 RPM drives were available but generated more heat.) + Large or dense arrays of disks (including server systems where disks are typically mounted densely) + Any disks which, due to the enclosure or other location they are mounted in, cannot easily cool without fanned air. + +Multiple purposes + +A case fan may be mounted on a radiator attached to the case, simultaneously operating to cool a liquid cooling device's working fluid and to ventilate the case. In laptops, a single blower fan often cools a heat sink connected to both CPU and GPU using heat pipes. In gaming laptops and mobile workstations, two or more heavy duty fans may be used. In rack-mounted servers, a single row of fans may operate to create an airflow through the chassis from front to rear, which is directed by passive ducts or shrouds across individual components' heat sinks. + +Other purposes +Fans are, less commonly, used for other purposes such as: + + Water-cooling radiator transfers a lot of heat, and radiator fans have large static pressure (opposed to case fans that have high airflow) for dissipating heat. + Laptop computers lack large openings in the case for warm air to escape. The laptop may be placed on a cooler – somewhat like a tray with fans built in – to ensure adequate cooling. + Some high-end machines (including many servers) or when additional reliability is required, other chips like SATA/SAS controller, high speed networking controllers (40Gbps Ethernet, Infiniband), PCIe switches, coprocessor cards (for example some Xeon Phi), some FPGA chips, south bridges are also actively cooled with a heatsink and a dedicated fan. These can be on a main motherboard itself or as a separate add-on board, often via PCIe card. + Expansion slot fana fan mounted in one of the PCI or PCI Express slots, usually to supply additional cooling to the graphics cards, or to expansion cards in general. + Optical drive fansome internal CD and/or DVD burners included cooling fans. + Memory fan modern computer memory can generate enough heat that active cooling may be necessary, usually in the form of small fans positioned above the memory chips. This applies especially when the memory is overclocked or overvolted, or when the memory modules include active logic, such as when a system uses Fully Buffered DIMMs (FB-DIMMs). However, with newer lower voltages in use, such as 1.2v DDR4, this is less commonly needed than used to be the case. Most of the time memory modules, located close to CPU will receive enough of the air flow from the case or CPU fan, even if the air from CPU fan and radiator is warm. If the main CPU is water cooled, this small amount of airflow might be missing, and additional care about some airflow in a case or a dedicated memory cooling is required. Unfortunately most memory modules do not provide temperature monitoring to easily measure it. + High power voltage regulators (VRM) often using switch mode power supplies do generate some heat due to power losses, mostly in the power MOSFET and in an inductor (choke). These, especially in overclocking situations require active cooling fan together with heatsink. Most of the MOSFETs will operate correctly at very high temperature, but their efficiency will be lowered and potentially lifespan limited. Proximity of electrolytic capacitors to a source of heat, will decrease their lifespan considerably and end in a progressively higher power losses and eventual (catastrophic) failure. + +Physical characteristics + +Due to the low pressure, high volume air flows they create, most fans used in computers are of the axial flow type; centrifugal and crossflow fans type. Two important functional specifications are the airflow that can be moved, typically stated in cubic feet per minute (CFM), and static pressure. Given in decibels, the sound volume figure can be also very important for home and office computers; larger fans are generally quieter for the same CFM. + +Dimensions + +The dimensions and mounting holes must suit the equipment that uses the fan. Square-framed fans are usually used, but round frames are also used, often so that a larger fan than the mounting holes would otherwise allow can be used (e.g., a 140 mm fan with holes for the corners of a 120 mm square fan). The width of square fans and the diameter of round ones are usually stated in millimeters. The dimension given is the outside width of the fan, not the distance between mounting holes. Common sizes include 40 mm, 60 mm, 80 mm, 92 mm, 120 mm and 140 mm, although +8 mm, 17 mm, 20 mm, 25 mm, 30 mm, 35 mm, 38 mm, 45 mm, 50 mm, 70 mm, 200 mm, 220 mm, 250 mm and 360 mm sizes are also available. Heights, or thickness, are typically 10 mm, 15 mm, 25 mm or 38 mm. + +Typically, square 120 mm and 140 mm fans are used where cooling requirements are demanding, as for computers used to play games, and for quieter operation at lower speeds. Larger fans are usually used for cooling case, CPUs with large heatsink and ATX power supply. Square 80 mm and 92 mm fans are used in less demanding applications, or where larger fans would not be compatible. Smaller fans are usually used for cooling CPUs with small heatsink, SFX power supply, graphics cards, northbridges, etc. + +Rotational speed +The speed of rotation (specified in revolutions per minute, RPM) together with the static pressure determine the airflow for a given fan. Where noise is an issue, larger, slower-turning fans are quieter than smaller, faster fans that can move the same airflow. Fan noise has been found to be roughly proportional to the fifth power of fan speed; halving the speed reduces the noise by about 15 dB. Axial fans may rotate at speeds of up to around 38,000 rpm for smaller sizes. + +Fans may be controlled by sensors and circuits that reduce their speed when temperature is not high, leading to quieter operation, longer life, and lower power consumption than fixed-speed fans. Fan lifetimes are usually quoted under the assumption of running at maximum speed and at a fixed ambient temperature. + +Air pressure and flow +A fan with high static pressure is more effective at forcing air through restricted spaces, such as the gaps between a radiator or heatsink; static pressure is more important than airflow in CFM when choosing a fan for use with a heatsink. The relative importance of static pressure depends on the degree to which the airflow is restricted by geometry; static pressure becomes more important as the spacing between heatsink fins decreases. Static pressure is usually stated in either mm Hg or mm H2O. + +Bearing types +The type of bearing used in a fan can affect its performance and noise. Most computer fans use one of the following bearing types: + + Sleeve bearings use two surfaces lubricated with oil or grease as a friction contact. They often use porous sintered sleeves to be self-lubricating, requiring only infrequent maintenance or replacement. Sleeve bearings are less durable at higher temperatures as the contact surfaces wear and the lubricant dries up, eventually leading to failure; however, lifetime is similar to that of ball-bearing types (generally a little less) at relatively low ambient temperatures. Sleeve bearings may be more likely to fail at higher temperatures, and may perform poorly when mounted in any orientation other than vertical. The typical lifespan of a sleeve-bearing fan may be around 30,000 hours at . Fans that use sleeve bearings are generally cheaper than fans that use ball bearings, and are quieter at lower speeds early in their life, but can become noisy as they age. + Rifle bearings are similar to sleeve bearings, but are quieter and have almost as much lifespan as ball bearings. The bearing has a spiral groove in it that pumps fluid from a reservoir. This allows them to be safely mounted with the shaft horizontal (unlike sleeve bearings), since the fluid being pumped lubricates the top of the shaft. The pumping also ensures sufficient lubricant on the shaft, reducing noise, and increasing lifespan. + Fluid bearings (or "Fluid Dynamic Bearing", FDB) have the advantages of near-silent operation and high life expectancy (though not longer than ball bearings), but tend to be more expensive. + Ball bearings: Though generally more expensive than fluid bearings, ball bearing fans do not suffer the same orientation limitations as a sleeve bearing fans, are more durable at higher temperatures, and are quieter than sleeve-bearing fans at higher rotation speeds. The typical lifespan of a ball bearing fan may be over 60,000 hours at . + Magnetic bearings or maglev bearings, in which the fan is repelled from the bearing by magnetism. + Ceramic bearings are presumed to be more durable, relying on a stable ceramic that has resistance to wear against a stainless steel shaft. + +Connectors + +Connectors usually used for computer fans are the following: + + Three-pin Molex connector KK family + This Molex connector is used when connecting a fan to the motherboard or other circuit board. It is a small, thick, rectangular in-line female connector with two polarizing tabs on the outer-most edge of one long side. Pins are square and on a 0.1 inch (2.54 mm) pitch. The three pins are used for ground, +12 V power, and a tachometer signal. The Molex part number of receptacle is 22-01-3037. The Molex part number of the individual crimp contacts is 08-50-0114 (tin plated) or 08-55-0102 (semi gold plated). The matching PCB header Molex part number is 22-23-2031 (tin plated) or 22-11-2032 (gold plated). A corresponding wire stripper and crimping tools are also required. + + Four-pin Molex connector KK family + This is a special variant of the Molex KK connector with four pins but with the locking/polarisation features of a three-pin connector. The additional pin is used for a pulse-width modulation (PWM) signal to provide variable speed control. These can be plugged into 3-pin headers, but will lose their fan speed control. The Molex part number of receptacle is 47054-1000. The Molex part number of individual crimp contacts is 08-50-0114. The Molex part number of the header is 47053-1000. + + Four-pin Molex connector + This connector is used when connecting the fan directly to the power supply. It consists of two wires (yellow/12 V and black/ground) leading to and splicing into a large in-line four-pin male-to-female Molex connector. The other two wires of the connector provide 5V (red) and ground (black too), and are not used in this case. This is the same connector as used on hard drives before the SATA became standard. + + Three-pin Molex connector PicoBlade family + This connector is used with notebook fans or when connecting the fan to the video card. + + Dell proprietary + This proprietary Dell connector is an expansion of a simple three-pin female IC connector by adding two tabs to the middle of the connector on one side and a lock-tab on the other side. The size and spacing of the pin sockets is identical to a standard three-pin female IC connector and three-pin Molex connector. Some models have the wiring of the white wire (speed sensor) in the middle, whereas the standard 3-pin Molex connector requires the white wire as pin #3, thus compatibility issues may exist. + + Others + Some computer fans use two-pin connectors, of various designs. + +Alternatives + +If a fan is not desirable, because of noise, reliability, or environmental concerns, there are some alternatives. Some improvement can be achieved by eliminating all fans except one in the power supply which also draws hot air out of the case. + +Systems can be designed to use passive cooling alone, reducing noise and eliminating moving parts that may fail. This can be achieved by: + Natural convection cooling: carefully designed, correctly oriented, and sufficiently large heatsinks can dissipate up to 100 W by natural convection alone + Heatpipes to transfer heat out of the case + Undervolting or underclocking to reduce power dissipation + Submersive liquid cooling, placing the motherboard in a non-electrically conductive fluid, provides excellent convection cooling and protects from humidity and water without the need for heatsinks or fans. Special care must be taken to ensure compatibility with adhesives and sealants used on the motherboard and ICs. This solution is used in some external environments such as wireless equipment located in the wild. +Other methods of cooling include: + Water cooling + Mineral oil + Liquid nitrogen + Refrigeration, e.g. by Peltier effect devices + Ionic wind cooling is being researched, whereby air is moved by ionizing air between two electrodes. This replaces the fan and has the advantage of no moving parts and less noise. + +See also + + Glossary of computer hardware terms + Fan (machine) + Centrifugal fan + Computer cooling + Computer fan control + Small form factor (SFF) + Software programs for controlling PC fans: Argus Monitor and SpeedFan + +References + +External links + 4-Wire PWM Controlled Fans Specification v1.3 – Intel + 3-Wire and 4-Wire Fan Connectors – Intel + 3-Wire and 4-Wire Fan Pinouts – AllPinouts + How PC Fans Work (2/3/4-wire) – PCB Heaven + Why and How to Control (2/3/4-wire) Fan Speed for Cooling Electronic Equipment – Analog Devices + PWM Fan Controller project – Alan's Electronic Projects + +Computer hardware cooling +Ventilation fans +The Calgary Cannons were a minor league baseball team located in Calgary, Alberta, for 18 seasons, from 1985 until 2002. They were a member of the AAA Pacific Coast League (PCL) and played at Foothills Stadium. The Cannons displaced the Calgary Expos, who played in the rookie level Pioneer League from 1977 until 1984. The team was previously known as the Salt Lake City Gulls before being relocated to Calgary. Following the 2002 season, the team moved to Albuquerque, New Mexico, where they became the Isotopes. + +The Cannons played 2,538 regular season games in Calgary, compiling a record of 1,225–1,308. They qualified for the playoffs five times: 1985, 1987, 1989, and 1991 as an affiliate of the Seattle Mariners, and 1998 as an affiliate of the Chicago White Sox. They reached the PCL Championship Series three times, in 1987, 1991, and 1998, though they never won a title. + +More than 400 Major League players wore a Cannons jersey, including Alex Rodriguez, Edgar Martínez, Danny Tartabull, and Jim Abbott. Two players pitched no-hitters with the Cannons: Frank Wills in 1985, and Erik Hanson in 1988. In 1985, Tartabull led all professional baseball players with 43 home runs. + +History +Russ Parker had operated a rookie-level Pioneer League team, the Calgary Expos, since 1977. In 1983, the opportunity to move up to AAA presented itself when the Salt Lake City Gulls were put up for sale. In December 1983, Parker purchased an option to buy the Gulls with the intention of moving the team to Calgary for the 1985 season. The Pacific Coast League approved the sale in May 1984, and reconstruction of Foothills Stadium began. More than 500 names were submitted in a name the team contest. Five finalists were selected: Stallions, Outlaws, Stetsons, Chinooks, and Cannons. The Cannons name was selected by a panel of local media representatives. The name was unique, as at the time, no professional or collegiate team in North America used the name. + +AAA arrives in Calgary +The Cannons began play in 1985 as the AAA affiliate of the Seattle Mariners. Their first game was played April 11, 1985, against the Phoenix Giants. The Cannons won 6–2, led by Danny Tartabull's home run, the first in Cannons history. Following a 6–2 opening road-trip, Calgary's home opener was scheduled for April 19. It was snowed out, however, as were attempts to play the following two days. On their fourth attempt, the Cannons finally played their first home game on April 22 against the Tucson Toros. Parker threw the ceremonial first pitch out to Calgary's mayor, Ralph Klein. Led by Mickey Brantley's four-hit game, the Cannons won 7–6 to send the crowd of 4,313 who braved the near-freezing temperatures home happy. + +The Cannons were a success at the gate, drawing 272,322 fans in 63 openings. The season was also a success on the field. The Cannons won the first half pennant in the North Division with a 37–32 record, earning a trip to the playoffs. The Cannons entered the North Division playoff series against the Vancouver Canadians without Tartabull, however, as he was recalled by the Mariners before the first game of the series. Tartabull's loss was significant, as he led all of professional baseball with 43 home runs. Calgary lost the best-of-five series to Vancouver in three games. + +The first no-hitter by a Cannons pitcher was hurled by Frank Wills on May 31, 1985, against the Tacoma Tigers in a seven-inning game. Three years later, Erik Hanson pitched the second no-hitter in Cannons history on August 21, 1988, posting a 5–0 victory over the Las Vegas Stars. Hanson walked only one batter in the seven-inning game. + +Pennant chases +Calgary again made the playoffs in 1987, finishing atop the North Division second half standings with a record of 46–25. The Cannons' overall record of 84–57 would ultimately stand as the best record the team compiled in Calgary. The Cannons lost the first two games of the Northern Division Championship Series against the Tacoma Tigers on the road before returning to Calgary to sweep the final three games of the series. Parker described the game five victory as "the biggest moment in Calgary baseball history." The Cannons faced the Albuquerque Dukes in the Pacific Coast League Championship Series. After splitting the first two games in Calgary, the Cannons dropped the next two in Albuquerque as the Dukes won their fourth PCL championship in ten years. + +The Cannons made their third playoff appearance in five years in 1989 by winning the second-half pennant with a record of 42–29. The record represented a worst-to-first result for Calgary, as the club finished last in the PCL North in the first half with a 28–43 record. The Guns faced the Vancouver Canadians in a rematch of the 1985 North Division Final. As in 1985, Vancouver swept Calgary in three games. + +The 1991 season marked the fourth playoff appearance for the Cannons, who posted a 45–24 record in the second half. The Cannons swept the Portland Beavers in three games to claim the second Northern Division pennant in franchise history. They also won their first playoff road-games in team history in setting up a championship clash with the Tucson Toros. Calgary won the first two games of the best-of-five series at home over Tucson, giving them three chances to win the title. The Cannons, however, dropped the final three games in Tucson, losing the title in the process. In the fifth game, the Cannons were forced to start Dennis Powell on two days' rest after the Mariners unexpectedly recalled intended starter Dave Fleming prior to the game. The move left Russ Parker "upset" and "dumbfounded". The relationship between the Mariners and Cannons was never the same. + +1990s +In 1993, Calgary's Foothills Stadium was identified by the National Association of Professional Baseball Leagues as one of several minor league facilities requiring renovations to meet new standards. The Cannons were given a deadline of April 1, 1995, to complete renovations, or the team would be forced to relocate. The Cannons and the City of Calgary engaged in a protracted battle over who would pay for the improvements. Renovations finally began in fall 1994 and were completed on time for the next season. + +The 1994 season saw the brief appearance of Alex Rodriguez in a Cannons uniform. The first-overall draft pick of the Mariners in 1993, Rodriguez vaulted through the Mariners organization in 1994, starting with the Appleton Foxes in Class A, then the AA Jacksonville Suns. Rodriguez was then promoted to the Mariners, playing 17 major league games before being optioned to Calgary to complete the season. + +Following the 1994 season, the Cannons and Mariners parted ways, as Seattle moved its AAA team to nearby Tacoma. The Cannons signed an affiliation agreement with the Pittsburgh Pirates, which lasted for three seasons. In 1998, the Cannons became the AAA affiliate of the Chicago White Sox. + +The 1998 Cannons qualified for the playoffs for the first time in seven seasons, doing so in dramatic fashion. Calgary clinched its third North Division pennant on September 3, 1998, defeating the Canadians 4–3 when Kevin Roberson hit a pinch-hit, two-run home run in the bottom of the ninth inning. The victory was the Cannons' 11th straight, and occurred before a crowd of 8,976, both franchise records. In the playoffs, the Cannons defeated the Fresno Grizzlies in five games to win the Pacific Conference championship, earning their third trip to the PCL Championship Series in team history. After dropping the first game of the final at home to the New Orleans Zephyrs, Calgary rebounded with 12–8 and 5–2 wins, the latter in New Orleans, to move within one game of winning the title. However, as in 1991, the Cannons were unable to clinch the title, falling 8–1 and 4–3 in New Orleans as the Zephyrs won the championship. + +After the season, the Cannons switched major league teams for a final time, and became the Florida Marlins' affiliate for the final four years in Calgary. + +Relocation +Citing six years of financial losses, Parker signed a letter of intent to sell the Cannons to a group from Albuquerque, New Mexico, in January 2001. It was not the first time Parker had considered such a sale. He backed out of a similar sale to a Portland, Oregon– based group at the last minute in 1999. The sale, which would see the team play in Calgary in 2001, then relocate to Albuquerque for the 2002 season, was contingent on voters in New Mexico supporting a referendum to pay for a new ballpark. + +Parker argued that the Cannons no longer made economic sense in Calgary. Foothills Stadium was badly outdated. The Canadian dollar was at record lows against the American dollar, placing the team at a disadvantage in a league that was American-based. Poor weather was also blamed, especially early in the season, leading to lower attendance. The new ballpark in Albuquerque was approved; however, construction delays pushed the relocation of the team back a year. The Cannons 18th, and final, season took place in 2002. + +The Cannons' final game was played on September 2, 2002, against the Edmonton Trappers. It ended in a wild 14���13 victory over Calgary's provincial rival before a sellout crowd of 8,512. The Cannons scored four runs in the bottom of the ninth inning to win the game, with the winning run scored on a strikeout/wild pitch. The team left the field to the song "Happy Trails" while the cannon in right field that had been fired every time a Calgary player hit a home run fired off a 21-gun salute. + +The team began play as the Albuquerque Isotopes in 2003, named after a Simpsons episode where Homer Simpson attempted to prevent the Springfield Isotopes from relocating to Albuquerque. In Calgary, two new teams began play at Foothills Stadium. The Calgary Outlaws of the independent Canadian Baseball League lasted only a half-season before the entire league folded. The Calgary Dawgs of the Western Major Baseball League operated as a college summer league team. The Calgary Vipers of the independent North American League was the most recent team to represent Calgary, but folded at the end of the 2011 season. + +All-time record + +Note: the PCL abandoned the split-season format beginning in the 1998 season as the league expanded to 16 teams following the dissolution of the American Association. + +Cannons in the Major Leagues + +Over 400 Cannons players also played in the Major Leagues. Of them, the following players played at least parts of ten or more seasons at the Major League level. + +Jim Abbott +Jim Acker +Rich Amaral +Scott Bankhead +Danny Bautista +José Bautista +Bret Boone +Chad Bradford +Darren Bragg +Jay Buhner +Dave Burba +A. J. Burnett +Iván Calderón +Luis Castillo +Ramon Castro +Jason Christiansen +Darnell Coles +Midre Cummings +Ryan Dempster +Elmer Dessens +Mariano Duncan +Mike Felder +Cliff Floyd +Ken Forsch +Ryan Franklin +Rene Gonzales +Jason Grilli +Ross Grimsley +Lee Guetterman +Eric Gunderson +Bill Haselman +Andy Hawkins +Bob Howry +Mike Kingery +Derrek Lee +Jon Lieber +Esteban Loaiza +Mike Lowell +Ron Mahay +Tino Martinez +Edgar Martínez +Larry Milbourne +Kevin Millar +Paul Mirabella +Rich Monteleone +Mike Morgan +John Moses +Tom Niedenfuer +Edwin Núñez +Keith Osik +Scott Radinsky +Joe Randa +Mike Remlinger +Harold Reynolds +Alex Rodriguez +Dave Schmidt +Brian Shouse +Matt Sinatro +Luis Sojo +Bill Swift +Danny Tartabull +Matt Treanor +Steve Trout +Dave Valle +Omar Vizquel +Jerome Walton +Turner Ward +John Wehner +Rick White +Preston Wilson +Tony Womack +Jason Wood +Kevin Young + +Foothills Stadium + +The status of Foothills Stadium, formerly known as Burns Stadium, was a consistent story throughout the Cannons' history. The ballpark's owner, the City of Calgary, risked scuttling the move of the Gulls to Calgary by choosing to reassess the feasibility of AAA baseball in Calgary in 1984. Council ultimately voted to support Parker, agreeing to a seven-year lease and $1.5 million to renovate Foothills, one of the PCL's conditions on approving the relocation. In the Cannons' early years, Foothills was regarded as a park with good atmosphere. Mel Kowalchuck of the Edmonton Trappers described the park in 1988: "They provide a good atmosphere at the park. Seating's good, and so is the field. The lighting, concessions, parking ... everything's good." + +Renovations to Foothills again became a major issue in 1993, when the National Association of Professional Baseball Leagues demanded that the Cannons upgrade Foothills to AAA standards. The Cannons and the city fought a protracted battle to see who would pay the majority of the $2 million renovation costs. The debate also included the Alberta government. Parker argued that if council did not choose to pay the majority of the renovation costs that he would sell or relocate the team. Groups representing Portland, Oregon; Fresno, and Sacramento, California; all expressed interest in the team. Unable to reach an agreement with the city, the Cannons then turned to the federal government in March 1994, making a pitch for a federal infrastructure grant to help pay for renovations. Renovations to Foothills Stadium finally began following the 1994 season. + +As other teams built new ballparks throughout the 1990s, Foothills' lack of luxury boxes, small clubhouses, and open concourse became a growing concern for Parker. By 1998, he was arguing the need for a new stadium, or a major renovation of Foothills at a cost of $20 million. Despite numerous efforts to convince city council to help renovate Foothills, Parker was unable to secure support for the project. When the Cannons were sold and relocated in 2002, Foothills Stadium was regarded as one of the major reasons why the team moved south to Albuquerque. + +See also +List of defunct baseball teams in Canada + +References + +External links + +Calgary Cannons alumni at The Baseball Cube +Calgary Cannons Minor League Geek + +Defunct Pacific Coast League teams +Baseball teams in Calgary +Defunct baseball teams in Canada +Baseball teams in Alberta +Baseball teams established in 1985 +Sports clubs and teams disestablished in 2002 +1985 establishments in Alberta +2002 disestablishments in Alberta +Chicago White Sox minor league affiliates +Miami Marlins minor league affiliates +Pittsburgh Pirates minor league affiliates +Seattle Mariners minor league affiliates +Baseball teams disestablished in 2002 +The Kolomoki Mounds is one of the largest and earliest Woodland period earthwork mound complexes in the Southeastern United States and is the largest in Georgia. Constructed from 350CE to 600CE, the mound complex is located in southwest Georgia, in present-day Early County near the Chattahoochee River. + +The mounds were designated as a National Historic Landmark in 1964. Seven of the eight mounds are protected as part of Kolomoki Mounds State Historic Park. + +Site characteristics + +Kolomoki Mounds State Park is an important archaeological site as well as a scenic recreational area. Kolomoki, covering some three hundred acres, is one of the larger preserved mound sites in the USA. + +In the early millennium of the Common Era, Kolomoki, with its surrounding villages, Native American burial mounds, and ceremonial plaza, was a center of population and activity in North America. The eight visible mounds of earth in the park were built between 250-950 CE by peoples of the Swift Creek and Weeden Island cultures. These mounds include Georgia's oldest great temple mound, built on a flat platform top; two burial mounds, and four smaller ceremonial mounds. + +As with other mound complexes, the people sited and built the earthworks according to a complex cosmology. Researchers have noted that several mounds are aligned according to astronomical events. For example, mounds A, D, and E, which form the central axis of the site, align with the sun at the spring equinox. Mounds F and D form an alignment with the sun at the summer solstice. + +Soils at the Park are mostly dark red sandy loams or loamy sands of the Americus, Greenville, and Red Bay series. Some pale brown sands of the Troup series occur on the western shores of Kolomoki Lake, and at the northern end of the lake is brown or dark gray alluvial loam of the Herod-Muckalee soil association. + +Archaeological features + +Temple Mound +The Temple Mound is high and measures 325 by at the base. Research indicates that it would have taken over two million basket loads carried by individual workers, each holding one cubic foot of earth, to build this mound. The southern half of the mound is three feet higher and was probably the temple platform. From the top of the steps, most of the Kolomoki Archaeological Area can be viewed. Approximately 1,500 - 2,000 residents lived in a village of thatched houses that were built around the large plaza in the center of the complex. It was a place for public ceremonial activities and rituals, including games. + +Mound D +Mound D is one of the eight visible mounds at the Kolomoki site. It is a conical mound that is high from the ground. It is centrally located at Kolomoki. Archeologists discovered the remains of 77 burials and ceremonial pottery here. The effigy pottery discovered was shaped in various animal and bird shapes, such as deer, quail and owls. + +Mound D was constructed in several stages, each time increasing in size. It began as a square-platform mound that was about tall. This original platform mound was built from yellow clay. Sixty pottery vessels were placed on the east wall including the above effigy pottery. + +After many subsequent burials and the addition of more yellow clay in layers, the mound was shaped as a larger circular mound about tall. These burials took place on the eastern side of the mound, and the skulls face eastward, the direction of the rising sun, apparently for religious reasons. Burial objects made from iron and copper and pearl beads were included as ceremonial objects with the burials. Finally, the entire mound was covered with red clay. + +Museum +The park's museum was built to incorporate part of an excavated mound; it provides an authentic setting for viewing artifacts. The museum features a film about how this mound was built and excavated. + +In March 1974, a thief entered the museum at the park and stole more than 129 ancient pots and effigies, numerous arrowheads, and other treasures. Every artifact on display was stolen. Several years later, many of the pieces were recovered by police and dealers in Miami and St. Augustine, Florida. But, with more than 70 relics still missing, the Georgia Department of Natural Resources (DNR) has sought public help in recovering these artifacts. Archeologists believe the pots are somewhere in Georgia or Florida, perhaps held by dealers or private collectors. + +Park Manager Matt Bruner said, + +These pieces are an important part of North American history and should be properly protected for future generations to study. They have significant meaning to the Native American people because many were used during burial ceremonies, plus they represent some of the finest craftsmanship of the Kolomoki culture. + +He emphasized that the state is more interested in recovering the pots than prosecuting the people who have them. + +Gallery + +See also + Etowah Indian Mounds + Ocmulgee Mounds National Historical Park + List of National Historic Landmarks in Georgia (U.S. state) + National Register of Historic Places listings in Early County, Georgia + +References + +External links + + "Kolomoki Mounds State Park", Georgia State Parks + Kolomoki PDF + website about missing artifacts + "Kolomoki Mounds Historic Park", Explore Southern History + "Kolomoki" , New Georgia Encyclopedia + The Kolomoki Indian Mounds historical marker + "Kolomoki Mounds Archaeological Area", Georgia state historical marker + "Kolomoki Mounds State Park", Georgia state historical marker + +Swift Creek culture +Weeden Island culture +Archaeological sites in Georgia (U.S. state) +National Historic Landmarks in Georgia (U.S. state) +State parks of Georgia (U.S. state) +Archaeological museums in Georgia (U.S. state) +Native American museums in Georgia (U.S. state) +Museums in Early County, Georgia +Protected areas established in 1964 +Protected areas of Early County, Georgia +Archaeological sites on the National Register of Historic Places in Georgia (U.S. state) +Landforms of Early County, Georgia +National Register of Historic Places in Early County, Georgia +Sixlets are small round candy-coated, chocolate-flavored candy made by Oak Leaf Confections, a Chocolat Frey company based in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. They are often sold in thin cellophane packages that hold them in a tube-like formation. The United States Food and Drug Administration recognized that Sixlets are safe for human consumption during a 1961 study. The ball-shaped candies come in colors that include red, brown, yellow, green, blue and orange. Each color is purported to add a slightly different taste than the others to the candy. An Easter variation of the candy adds white, pink, and blue pieces while removing red and brown ones from the mix. A Christmas variation has only red, green and white; and the Valentine's Day variation has red, pink, and white. Halloween versions are also sold, having orange, teal, purple, green, and black candies. At some specialty candy stores, Sixlets can be found sold loose by weight in individually sorted colors not found in the typical variety- lime green, black, pink, etc.- in the same way that M&M's are popularizing designer color selection. They are also packaged for sale as decoration for baked goods. + +History +Sixlets have existed since at least 1960 and were originally made by Leaf Brands. A candy brand with a similar name that was also made by Leaf in the 1960s was called Fivesomes. Fivesomes were a miniature version of Whoppers that, like Sixlets, also came in cellophane wrapping. In 1996, Hershey purchased the North American confectionery operations of Leaf, Inc., including such brands as Jolly Rancher, Heath Bar, Whoppers, Chuckles, Milk Duds and Sixlets. In 2003, Hershey Foods Corporation sub-licensed their rights to the Sixlets brand name to SweetWorks Confections LLC. + +One hypothesis for the name's origin is that the candy, when originally manufactured, was sold six for a penny in a bubble gum-like machine. Although the candies are currently sold in a variety of packages, the most comparable to the original is an eight-ball cellophane pack sold in bags containing several servings. A six-ball tube was introduced in 2017. + +References + +External links +Sixlets Corporate webpage + +Canadian confectionery +The were Japanese suicide motorboats developed during World War II. They were part of the wider Japanese Special Attack Units program. + +History +Towards the end of 1943, in response to unfavorable progress in the war, the Japanese high command heard suggestions for various suicide craft. These suggestions were initially rejected as "defeatist" but later deemed necessary. For the naval department this meant kamikaze planes, kaiten submarines, fukuryu suicide divers or human mines, and shinyo suicide boats. + +Characteristics +These fast motorboats were driven by one man, to speeds of around . They were typically equipped with a bow-mounted charge of up to of explosives that could be detonated by either impact or from a manual switch in the driver's area. These attack boats also carried two anti-ship rockets mounted on launchers located on either side of the boat behind the driver. + +The similar Maru-Ni, which were used by the Imperial Japanese Army, were equipped with two depth charges, and were not actually suicide boats, as the idea was to drop the depth charges and then turn around before the explosion took place. Although the chances of the boat and crew surviving the wave from the explosion might seem slim, a small number of crewmen successfully escaped. The depth charges used were known as the Experimental Manufacture Use 120 kg Depth Charge, and were armed by a delayed-action pull igniter. + +The program began in March 1944. The first vessels were tested on 27 May, after which it was decided that the original steel hull design would be replaced by a wooden hull due to the Japanese steel shortage. On 1 August, 150 students, on average 17 years old, elected to begin training for the Shinyo. + +6,197 Shinyo boats were produced for the Imperial Japanese Navy and 3,000 Maru-ni for the Imperial Japanese Army. Around 400 boats were transported to Okinawa and Formosa, and the rest were stored on the coast of Japan for the ultimate defense against the expected invasion of the Home islands. The main operative use took place during the Philippines Campaign of 1944–45. + +Operational results +January 10, 1945: Sinking of American ships USS LCI(G)-365 (Landing Craft Infantry – Gunboat), USS LCI(M)-974 (Landing Craft Infantry – Mortar) and crippling of USS War Hawk (an auxiliary transport) in Lingayen Gulf, Luzon, Philippines. +January 31, 1945: Sinking of (Submarine chaser) off Nasugbu in Luzon, Philippines. +February 16, 1945: Sinking of USS LCS(L)-7 (Landing Craft Support – Large), LCS(L)-26, and LCS(L)-49 off Mariveles, Corregidor Channel, Luzon. +April 4, 1945: Sinking of USS LCI(G)-82 (Landing Craft Infantry – Gunboat) and (Landing Ship Medium) off Okinawa. +April 9, 1945: Damaging of . +April 27, 1945: Crippling of in Buckner Bay, Okinawa. +May 4, 1945: Damaging of in the north end of Buckner Bay, Okinawa. + +See also +List of Allied vessels struck by Japanese special attack weapons + +References + +Bibliography + +External links +Japanese Suicide Weapons +Explosive Motorboats based at Okinawa 1944–1945 + +World War II suicide weapons of Japan +Minor warship classes +Motorboats +Ships built in Japan +Michael Brennan OAM (born 15 October 1975 in Toowoomba, Queensland) is a field hockey midfielder from Australia, who was a member of the team that won gold at the 2004 Summer Olympics in Athens. Four years earlier, when Sydney hosted the Summer Games, he finished in third spot with The Kookaburras , as the men's national team is called. Michael Brennan has since gone on to become a multiple Group 1 winning horse trainer. + +References + Profile on Hockey Australia + +External links + + https://smh.com.au/sport/racing/michael-brennan-going-for-gold-with-im-victorious-in-interdominion-final-20140301-33snn.html + +Living people +1975 births +Australian male field hockey players +Male field hockey midfielders +Olympic field hockey players for Australia +Olympic gold medalists for Australia +Olympic bronze medalists for Australia +1998 Men's Hockey World Cup players +Field hockey players at the 2000 Summer Olympics +Field hockey players at the 2004 Summer Olympics +Recipients of the Medal of the Order of Australia +People educated at Trinity College, Perth +Sportspeople from Toowoomba +Olympic medalists in field hockey +Medalists at the 2004 Summer Olympics +Medalists at the 2000 Summer Olympics +Commonwealth Games medallists in field hockey +Commonwealth Games gold medallists for Australia +Field hockey players at the 1998 Commonwealth Games +Sportsmen from Queensland +Field hockey people from Queensland +Medallists at the 1998 Commonwealth Games +The Zee Cine Award Best Actor in a Supporting Role – Female is chosen by the viewers, and the winner is announced at the actual ceremony. + +The award is given in March, but the actress who wins it is awarded for her work from a movie released in the previous year from 1 January to 31 December. + +Sushmita Sen, Divya Dutta, Swara Bhaskar, and Shabana Azmi are the four actresses to have won this award twice to date. + +The most recent recipient is Sheeba Chaddha. + +Multiple wins + +Winners + +See also + Zee Cine Awards + Bollywood + Cinema of India + +References + +Film awards for supporting actress +International film awards +Zee Cine Awards +The Holy Family High School is a private Catholic primary and secondary school for boys located in the suburb of East Andheri in Mumbai, in the state of Maharashtra, India. While the school is primarily English-medium, there is also a smaller Marathi-medium section that runs in parallel from the fifth to the tenth standard. The school now also has a junior college named Holy Family Junior College for 11th and 12th grade HSC students. The school is located near MIDC, Andheri East, Mumbai - 400093, Opposite MIDC building. + +History + +Holy Family High School was founded in 1944 as a parish institution in an old, single-storied structure by Fr. Denzil Keating, S.J. The school's first headmistress was Maud D'Costa. + +In 1963, another school building was constructed adjoining Holy Family Church. It was improved and extended with the help of student efforts such as donations, raffles, and school fêtes. A new hall and classrooms were constructed. This building lacked facilities such as filtered drinking water and a cafeteria. It had an inadequate playground and poor sports facilities, requiring the use of the Vinayalaya Jesuit seminary grounds, behind the school and church buildings. The building was extended in the 1970s to have multiple stories, with additional classrooms and a school hall. The school had female students for a few years. Some were admitted for year 11 science and commerce streams. Earlier in the school's history females were accepted at lower levels as well. A mini-stadium was built on the old school ground using funds donated by Jitendra Shah. A few years later, the building became too small to cater to the growing number of parishioners and the building was sold. + +A more spacious building was constructed, with its own playground on a nearby plot of land. On 22 October 1985, Fr. Lisbert D'Souza, S.J., (Provincial Superior of the Bombay Jesuits) blessed the foundation stone and on 16 July 1988 Bishop Ferdinand Fonseca blessed the new building. On 7 January 1989, under the tenure of Jesuit Frs. Tony J. D'Souza as vicar and Francis Gonsalves as principal, the new school building was formally inaugurated by Simon Cardinal Pimenta, the archbishop of Bombay. + +In 2005, the school added an amphitheatre and in 2009 a semi-olympic size swimming pool, both at the initiative of the school PTA. Craft and painting courses are offered. Class picnics are held once a year. + +A Parent-Teacher Association (PTA) was established in 1964. + +50th anniversary + +In 1995, the school celebrated its 50th anniversary with a grand celebration including a fireworks display. In the large crowd attending were several of the school's former principals. A time capsule containing fifty years of school information was buried at the foot of the Holy Family statue to be reopened in the year 2045. + +60th anniversary + +In 2005 the school celebrated its 60th anniversary. Under the initiative of the principal, Fr. Francis Swamy, S.J., and the school's PTA, a five-night fête was held on the school grounds. Celebrities were present for the occasion which was broadcast live on cable TV. + +Principals + +The following individuals have served as principal of the school: + +See also + + List of Jesuit schools + List of schools in Mumbai + Violence against Christians in India + +References + +External links +Holy Family High School + Holy Family High School (informal) + Holy Family High School Parent-Teacher Association +Holy Family Church + Satellite view of Holy Family High School by Google Maps + +Jesuit secondary schools in India +Jesuit primary schools in India +Boys' schools in India +Christian schools in Maharashtra +High schools and secondary schools in Mumbai +Educational institutions established in 1945 +1945 establishments in India +Sarah Abitbol (born 8 June 1975) is a French former competitive pair skater. With skating partner Stéphane Bernadis, she is the 2000 World bronze medalist, the 2000 Grand Prix Final silver medalist, a seven-time European medalist (two silver and five bronze medals), and a ten-time French national champion. + +Early life and career +Born in Nantes, France, Abitbol began skating at the age of six, choosing skating over swimming. She initially took lessons and practiced in that area. In 1992, at the age of 17, she teamed up with Stéphane Bernadis to compete in pair skating. Abitbol/Bernadis were coached by Jean-Roland Racle early in their career, followed by Stanislav Leonovich in Paris. + +At the 2000 World Championships in Nice, France, Bernadis said he was attacked by an unknown assailant with a razor on 28 March when he opened his hotel room door. He suffered an eight-inch cut down his left forearm. Bernadis said he had received a death threat three weeks earlier. At the event, he and Abitbol won the bronze medal, becoming the first French pair skaters to win a World medal since 1932, when Andrée Brunet / Pierre Brunet won gold in this competition. + +When Bernadis became injured after performing the short program, the pair had to withdraw from the 2001 World Championships. They qualified for the 2002 Olympics by winning the 2001 Golden Spin of Zagreb. Abitbol/Bernadis withdrew from the 2002 Olympics after Abitbol's Achilles tendon ruptured in practice; she underwent surgery and was off the ice for six months. After the 2003 European Championships, the pair changed coaches, moving to Jean-Christophe Simond. + +Abitbol/Bernadis worked on throw triple Axels. + +Personal life +Abitbol married Jean-Louis Lacaille in 2009. Their daughter, Stella, was born in June 2011. + +In January 2020, Abitbol published a memoir, Such A Long Silence (Un si long silence). In it, she accused her former singles coach Gilles Beyer of sexual assault, stating it began in 1990 when she was 15 and continued over a period of two years. This triggered a scandal that led to the resignation that year of FFSG president Didier Gailhaguet over his alleged covering up of past allegations against Beyer, in addition to cover ups of other cases. + +While the assaults reported by Abitbol occurred outside the time limits of the statutes of limitations, Beyer was subsequently charged with sexual assault and harassment in cases relating to six other students who came forward with allegations of more recent events. In addition, Sports Minister Roxana Mărăcineanu ordered a broader investigation of the prevalence of sexual abuse in French sports culture. This concluded with reports of misconduct by more than 400 individuals. + +Programs +(with Bernadis) + +Results +with Bernadis + +GP: Champions Series / Grand Prix + +See also +List of select Jewish figure skaters + +References + +External links + + + Official website of Abitbol / Bernadis + +1975 births +Olympic figure skaters for France +Figure skaters at the 1998 Winter Olympics +French female pair skaters +Living people +Jewish French sportspeople +World Figure Skating Championships medalists +European Figure Skating Championships medalists +Sportspeople from Nantes +WDTW (1310 kHz) is a commercial AM radio station licensed to Dearborn, Michigan, and serving the Detroit metropolitan area. Owned by Pedro Zamora, the station broadcasts a Spanish-language radio format branded as La Z 1310. It features Regional Mexican, Spanish-language Contemporary Hits and Mexican Pop. The studios and offices are on Goddard Road in Taylor, Michigan. + +WDTW is powered at 5,000 watts. It uses a directional antenna with a six-tower array. The transmitter is on Monroe Boulevard near Interstate 94 in Taylor. Programming is also heard on 85-watt FM translator W300DI at 107.9 MHz in Detroit. + +History + +Early years +The station signed on the air on . The original call sign was WKMH. The owner was Fred A. Knorr, who served as president and General Manager. It was originally a daytime-only station broadcasting on 1540 AM. It added an FM station, WKMH-FM 100.3 (now WNIC) in the same month. WKMH AM moved to its current 1310 frequency and began round-the-clock operations in 1948. + +WKMH-AM-FM specialized in local news, information, sports, and mainly middle of the road (MOR) music. WKMH's most popular personality was Robin Seymour, a pioneering rock and roll disk jockey. Seymour's "Bobbin' with Robin" show featured a music mix that foreshadowed the birth of the Top 40 radio format in playing R&B and early rock and roll artists like The Crows alongside mainstream pop stars like Patti Page. Seymour remained with the station as it became WKNR and later became the host of Swingin' Time, a popular local teenage dance show on CKLW-TV. + +WKMH garnered some notice through early 1960s Top 40 shows hosted by personalities such as Lee Alan "On the Horn" and Dave "Sangoo" Prince, but the station was generally considered an also-ran in the Detroit market and a weak competitor to WJBK and WXYZ, which were Detroit's dominant Top 40 stations. At night, the station featured a jazz show hosted by Jim Rockwell (later of WABX-FM). In addition, WKMH was briefly Detroit's CBS Radio network affiliate in 1960, after WJR dropped its ties to CBS to add more local programming. Despite, or some might say because of, this unusual move, WKMH continued to flounder. + +In 1962 the station shed its CBS affiliation (which WJR regained) and became "Flagship Radio," an early adult contemporary format featuring a mix of softer current pop hits and MOR album cuts, but this format, too, was not popular. + +"Keener 13" +Despite the power of WJBK and WXYZ and the 50,000-watt signal of CKLW, consultant Mike Joseph (best known for developing the Hot Hits format in the late 1970s) was convinced there was room for a fourth Top 40 station in Detroit and that 1310 AM could easily climb ahead of the competition. With WKMH owner Nellie Knorr, he developed the formula that ultimately became a success. + +Joseph instituted a shorter playlist of only 31 records plus one "key song" of the week and a liberal sprinkling of oldies. Most Top 40 stations of that era played many more current records. WJBK, WXYZ and CKLW all had very long playlists at the time, stretching to 80 to 100 songs at times. WKNR's shorter playlist ensured the station played more hits and fewer "stiffs" and that listeners would hear one of the top hits whenever they tuned in. WKNR also played the hits 24 hours a day, as opposed to the other hit stations in Detroit which were loaded with non-music full-service features (especially on weekends). + +WKNR officially launched on October 31, 1963, with the "Battle of the Giants," an attention-grabbing promotion that invited listeners to call in to vote for their favorite oldies. The station quickly gained momentum, and in an unprecedented "worst-to-first" move, three months later "Keener" was a solid across-the-board number one in the ratings. This happened despite a weak signal which missed most of the east side of the Detroit metro area, especially at night, although the station could be heard market-wide on its more powerful FM simulcast at 100.3. WKNR became the preeminent Top 40 radio station in the Motor City. Competitors WJBK and WXYZ were hurt in the ratings by their new competitor, and both stations eventually were driven out of Top 40 and into MOR formats. It has been reported that the legendary Henry Ford II himself was an avid Keener fan. + +Keener featured popular personalities like Dick Purtan, Bob Green, Gary Stevens (later of New York's legendary WMCA), J. Michael Wilson, Scott Regen, Ted Clark and Jim Jeffries. It played a mix of music that included a number of local acts featuring many of Detroit's Motown superstars. Scott Regen's "Motown Monday" features included live concerts from the Roostertail supper club, featuring Motown legends such as the Supremes and The Four Tops. Dick Purtan honed the wry, sardonic sense of humor that made him a fixture on the Motor City airwaves for four decades, first on WKNR. The station's promotions, imaging, and jingles were noted for their wacky, offbeat sound and were imitated frequently by other stations across the country, including sister station WKFR in Battle Creek, Michigan, which was known as "Keener 14." Bob Green would later describe the Keener sound as being like "a 24-hour cartoon." + +Keener 13's appeal to adult listeners as well as teens was cemented with the station's news commitment. "Contact News" aired at :15 and :45 past the hour every hour. WKNR's newscasts were straightforward and lacked the flash or sensationalism of CKLW's "blood-and-guts" 20/20 News but were highly regarded. The station released a "Year in Review" album each year which was made available to area schools. + +WKNR's dominance was challenged when CKLW 800 AM got a makeover courtesy of consultants Bill Drake and Paul Drew in April 1967. With 50,000 watts behind it and a lightning-fast pace based on Drake's "Boss Radio" model, The Big 8 became the number one Top 40 station in the region. Some of Keener's top DJs, including Dick Purtan and Scott Regen, eventually moved over to CKLW. However, WKNR did not go down without a fight, continuing to battle the Big 8 for five more years despite dropping ratings. During this time, the station attempted to distinguish itself from CKLW by playing less bubblegum pop and more album rock cuts. It promoted itself as "Rock and Roll The American Way," a jab at CKLW's location in Windsor, Ontario, and Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission-mandated "Canadian content" regulations imposed at the start of 1971. Sister station WKNR-FM 100.3, which had previously simulcast the AM programming, switched to a more adventurous progressive rock format starting in 1969. But by 1971, WKNR-FM flipped to an easy listening "Stereo Island" format in 1971, switching its call letters to WNIC. + +The Keener 13 era is celebrated at Keener13.com, with an extensive history, an archive of air checks and a database of every WKNR Music Guide in addition to an online tribute webcast called WKNR Keener 13 dot com. + +Easy Listening and Oldies +On April 25, 1972, "Keener 13" ended its Top 40 format. The final song was "Turn! Turn! Turn!" by The Byrds. WKNR began playing the same easy listening format that was successful on 100.3 WNIC, simulcasting its FM sister station. WNIC-FM changed to a soft adult contemporary format in 1976. AM 1310 simulcast for a short time until the decision was made in 1977 to revive the "Keener 13" brand name on its original frequency with an adult-oriented Top 40 and Oldies mix and a new call sign, WWKR. (The WKNR call sign was unavailable after having been installed on the former WKFR, now WBFN). The legendary "Keener 13" record survey, the "Keener Music Guide," was also brought back, but was published on a monthly rather than weekly basis. The second version of "Keener 13" did not have the success of the original, and by 1980, AM 1310 was back to simulcasting WNIC-FM. + +Since late 1986, AM 1310 has tried several other different formats, none of which have attained lasting success, and has been in and out of simulcasting WNIC 100.3 between formats. Other formats heard on 1310 since 1986 include: + WMTG - satellite-fed Rhythmic Oldies, 1986–1994. Programming came from Satellite Music Network's "Heart and Soul" package. The calls stood for "Motown Gold." + WDOZ - children's programming, 1994-1996 (affiliated with the Radio AAHS network and then with KidStar after AAHS went under) + WYUR - "Your Radio Station"/Personality News-Talk/Adult Standards/Classical, 1997–2000. This permutation of AM 1310 was started by veteran WJR broadcaster Bob Hynes in an attempt to revive the sound of the 50,000-watt giant at AM 760 before it changed to the standard news/talk outlet it is now. After longtime classical-music station WQRS changed format in November 1997, the station added classical music to its schedule. However, WYUR had only a minimal impact in the ratings. + WXDX - "The X"/Sports Talk (Fox Sports Radio), 2000–2002 + WXDX - "The X"/Talk (mostly syndicated), 2002–2005 + +In 2005, 1310 became WDTW, owned by Clear Channel Communications. The station featured a progressive talk format. The station's call letters temporarily changed to WWWW on July 24, 2006, as part of a station swap between Clear Channel Communications and Cumulus Media in the Ann Arbor and Canton, Ohio markets. On September 15, 2006, the call letters were changed back to WDTW. + +On January 21, 2010, WDTW's network, Air America Media, filed for Chapter 7 Bankruptcy and ceased live programming the same night. Reruns of Air America's programming continued to air until January 25 at 9 PM Eastern Time. After that, WDTW had to find other programs. + +Donation to Minority Media +On December 11, 2012, Clear Channel announced it would donate WDTW to the Minority Media and Telecommunications Council (MMTC), as part of the Ownership Diversity Initiative between Clear Channel and the MMTC. The MMTC did not announce any specific plans for the station. + +On December 14, 2012, it was revealed that the MMTC donation applied only to the license of the station, as Clear Channel announced that WDTW would cease broadcasting at midnight on December 31, 2012. The station's antennas and transmitter facilities near the intersection of I-94 and Telegraph Road in Taylor were dismantled shortly afterward. + +Spanish-language programming + +In 2014, the MMTC chose to resell WDTW to Pedro Zamora, who owns several Spanish-language radio stations and a promoter specializing in Spanish-language musicians, for $100,000. After the sale, WDTW reconstructed its broadcast facilities, a process that had an estimated cost of around $1 million. In April 2016, the station officially re-launched as La Mega Detroit 1310. Zamora entered into arrangements with TSJ Media (which operates La Mega stations in other markets) to assist in WDTW's operations. The station was operated out of TSJ's facilities in Columbus, Ohio, while WDTW completed the build-out of its studio in Taylor, Michigan, and hired full-time staff members. TSJ's owner Josh Guttman stated that he also planned for WDTW to pursue Spanish-language broadcast rights to local professional sports teams, as TSJ had successfully done in Ohio. + +On July 21, 2017, WDTW activated a low-powered FM translator on 107.9 FM in Detroit, W300DI. That year, the station also dropped the La Mega brand in favor of La Z 1310. + +See also +Media in Detroit + +References + +External links +The Michael Stein Show +WKNR Keener 13.com (streaming webcaster) +Keener13.com (tribute site and former podcaster) + +FCC History Cards for WDTW + +DTW +Radio stations established in 1946 +1946 establishments in Michigan +Regional Mexican radio stations in the United States +Tropical music radio stations +Spanish-language radio stations in the United States +Mimolette is a cheese traditionally produced around the city of Lille, France. In France it is also known as Boule de Lille after its city of origin, or vieux Hollande because it was originally inspired by the Dutch Edam cheese. + +Description +Mimolette has a spherical shape and is similar in appearance to a cantaloupe melon. It normally weighs about 2 kg (approximately 4.5 pounds) and is made from cow's milk. Its name comes from the French word mi-mou (feminine mi-molle), meaning "semi-soft", which refers to the oily texture of this otherwise hard cheese. The bright orange color of the cheese comes from the natural seasoning, annatto. When used in small amounts, primarily as a food colorant, annatto adds no discernible flavor or aroma. The grey-colored rind of aged Mimolette occurs from cheese mites that are added to the surface of the cheese, which serve to enhance its flavor. + +Mimolette can be consumed at different stages of aging. When younger, its taste resembles that of Parmesan. Many appreciate it most when it is "extra-old" (extra-vieille). At that point, it can become rather hard to chew, and the flesh takes on a hazelnut-like flavor. + +History +It was originally made by the request of Louis XIV, who – in the context of Jean-Baptiste Colbert's mercantilistic policies – was looking for a native French product to replace the then very popular Edam. To make it distinct from Edam, it was first colored using carrot juice and later seasoned with annatto to give it a distinct orange color. + +The cheese was known to be a favorite of French President Charles de Gaulle. + +Health concerns in the U.S. +In 2013, the Food and Drug Administration detained about a ton of the cheese, putting further imports to the United States on hold. This was because the cheese mites could cause an allergic reaction if consumed in large quantities. The FDA stated that the cheese was above the standard of six mites per cubic inch. The restriction was lifted in 2014. + +See also +Milbenkäse +Casu marzu + List of cheeses + + Cuisine and specialties of Nord-Pas-de-Calais + +References + +French cheeses +Cow's-milk cheeses +Mites as food +Lille +El Kala (, Latin Thinisa in Numidia) is a seaport of Algeria, in El Tarf Province, 56 miles (90 km) by rail east of Annaba and 10 miles (16 km) west of the Tunisian frontier. It is the centre of the Algerian and Tunisian coral fisheries and has an extensive industry in the curing of sardines. The harbor is small and exposed to the northeast and west winds. + +El Kala attracts tourists from within and outside the country, especially during the summer. It is home to an exceptional ecosystem and was declared a biosphere reserve by UNESCO in 1990. + +History + +Thinisa in Numidia was an ancient city in the Roman province of Numidia. It was important enough to become a bishopric. The old fortified town was built on a rocky peninsula about 400 metres long, connected with the mainland by a sand bank. + +French and Italian coral fishing companies were interested in the area from as early as 1553. A trade bastion called "Bastion de France" by its Corsican founders was established during that period principally for the exploitation of red coral and also to facilitate trade between southern France and that part of northern Algeria. The bastion was shut down and returned to the rule of the Bey of Constantine in 1816. + +After the occupation of La Calle by the French in 1836, a new town was built up along the coast. + +Titular see of Thinisa in Numidia +In 1933, the Ancient diocese of Thinisa in Numidia was nominally restored as a Catholic titular see of the lowest (episcopal) rank. + +It has had the following incumbents: + Francesco Venanzio Filippini, Friars Minor (O.F.M.) (1933.05.23 – 1973.03.31) + Mario Revollo Bravo (1973.11.13 – 1978.02.28) (later Cardinal) + Javier Lozano Barragán (1979.06.05 – 1984.10.28) (later Cardinal) + Mario Picchi, Salesians (S.D.B.) (1989.06.19 – 1997.03.29) + Vincenzo Pelvi (1999.12.11 – 2006.10.14) (later Archbishop of Foggia–Bovino) + Laurent Chu Văn Minh, Auxiliary Bishop of Hanoi (Vietnam) (2008.10.15 – Present) . + +See also +European enclaves in North Africa before 1830 + +References + +Sources + +External links + El Kala + GigaCatholic, with titular incumbent biographical links + + +Mediterranean port cities and towns in Algeria +Communes of El Taref Province +El Taref Province +WLLZ (106.7 MHz, Detroit's Wheels) is a commercial FM radio station licensed to Detroit, Michigan. It is owned by iHeartMedia and it broadcasts a classic rock radio format, focusing mostly on active rock titles from the 1980s and 1990s. Its studios are in the Detroit suburb of Farmington Hills on Halsted Road. + +WLLZ has an effective radiated power (ERP) of 61,000 watts. It is one of several Detroit FM stations that are grandfathered at a higher power than the maximum 50,000 watts that would be permitted today. The transmitter is atop the Cadillac Tower on Cadillac Square at Bates Avenue in Downtown Detroit.Radio-Locator.com/WLLZ + +History + +Classical and jazz (1960-1966) +The station began operations on October 16, 1960, as WDTM, airing classical music and jazz. It was owned by Taliesin Stations and was an affiliate of the WQXR Network, based at the leading New York City classical station. + +Beautiful music (1966-1970) +In 1966, Gordon McLendon purchased the station, changed the call sign to WWWW ("W4"), and installed a beautiful music format. The station was located at 2930 E. Jefferson Avenue in Detroit, in a building now housing the marijuana law firm Cannabis Counsel, P.L.C. + +Oldies (1970-1971) +By 1970, McLendon changed W4's format from easy listening to "Solid Gold" (oldies-oriented Top 40) as "W4 Stereo." The disc jockey staff included Don Schuster and Detroit radio legend Tom Clay. During its Solid Gold period, W4 was one of the first stations to pick up Detroit radio veteran Casey Kasem's newly syndicated countdown show, American Top 40. + +Album rock (1971-1981) +In 1971, "W4" became an album oriented rock station. In 1974, it briefly styled itself "W4 Quad" during its brief use of quadrophonic transmission. In the late 1970s, album-rock W4 was one of the top-rated radio stations in Detroit. + +Shamrock Broadcasting purchased W4 in July 1979. The station is most remembered today as one of the early radio jobs for Howard Stern, who was brought in from Hartford, Connecticut, to host mornings, beginning April 21, 1980. However, W4 was one of four Detroit stations with an AOR format, and faced with increasing competition and rapidly falling ratings, management decided to make a change. + +Country (1981-1999) +With no advance notice, Shamrock changed the station's format to country music on January 18, 1981. At first, the DJs, including Stern, were kept on to play country hits. The station reportedly planned to brand Howard Stern as "Hopalong Howie," which he declined after two weeks, moving to WWDC-FM in Washington, D.C. In the film "Private Parts", Stern announces his departure in the middle of a song, claiming he didn't understand country music. + +The move to country music paid off; the Detroit radio market, the nation's fifth largest at the time, had no FM country music station. In addition, Detroit and its suburbs had a sizable percentage of the population whose families hailed from the Southern United States and grew up with the genre. W4 Country's first years coincided with the rise in popularity of country music, even outside the South. At the time of the country format's launch, the immediate Detroit area's only country music station was on AM, WCXI at 1130 kHz. WWWW became the first FM country station in Detroit since WCAR-FM's and CKLW-FM's brief tries at the format in the mid-1970s. As a result, WCXI's ratings fell. By the early 1990s, AM 1130 was being used as a simulcast for W4. + +"W4 Country" lasted almost two decades and did reasonably well in the ratings, under the leadership of programmer Barry Mardit, who joined the station in late 1981. The station posted a #1 finish in the Fall 1992 Detroit Arbitron radio ratings with an 8.7 share. The following year, the station gained a strong competitor in WYCD, causing WWWW's ratings to decline. Recording artist Holly Dunn served as morning co-host on W4 Country during the late 1990s. Declining ratings and revenue led owners AMFM (which became part of Clear Channel Communications in August 2000) to drop the country format at 6 p.m. on September 1, 1999. The final song played on "W4 Country" was "The Dance" by Garth Brooks, followed by "The Star-Spangled Banner." + +Classic hits (1999-2002) + +For two days, WWWW stunted with a 400-Hz tone, and ran a contest to correctly guess the day and time that the tone would end. On September 3, 1999, at 2:05 p.m., the station relaunched as "Alice 106.7," featuring "Rockin' Hits of the '80s and '90s." The first song was "All Right Now" by Free. + +The WWWW call letters remained for another year until the new call sign WLLC was adopted on October 2, 2000. Emphasis was eventually put on the "C" during reciting the legal station identification ("WLL..See") due to listeners mistakenly believing the station picked up call letters WLLZ, which had been used on 98.7 (now WDZH). In September 2000, the WWWW call sign moved to 102.9 MHz in nearby Ann Arbor, also owned by Clear Channel. It had been a rock station WIQB before the flip. + +While WYCD benefited from the end of "W4 Country," ratings for "Alice" remained anemic. + +Classic rock (2002-2006) +In July 2002, WLLC changed its call letters to WDTW-FM and relaunched as "106.7 The Drive." It mainly featured classic hard rock tracks from the 1970s through the 1990s with a more upbeat and harder-edged presentation than classic rock rival WCSX. WDTW-FM's ratings continued to be poor. + +Country (2006-2009) +At noon on May 17, 2006, "The Drive" signed off with "Too Late For Love" by Def Leppard, followed by an announcement from legendary Detroit TV news anchor Bill Bonds. He talked about "building a brand new radio station" at 106.7 and "letting you, the listeners, choose the music." For the next week, listeners who registered at 1067needshelp.com picked the new radio format, the station's name, logo, voice of the station and number of commercials per hour. + +On May 19, after playing two days of music from many formats, then narrowing it down to just rock and country, it was announced at 3 p.m. that the format would be country music. The first official song played under the country format was "Save a Horse (Ride a Cowboy)" by Big & Rich. On May 22, the station became "106.7 The Fox." Finally, on May 26, 2006, the format change appeared complete as the voice of the station and minutes of music per hour were announced. Radio insiders believed the station had adopted a country format only to steal listeners from WYCD, and keep co-owned WNIC in the #1 slot. But ratings for The Fox remained low during its entire run and had little impact on WYCD's audience. On April 29, 2009, WDTW-FM went jockless and soft-relaunched under the branding of "Detroit Fox Country 106-7." The station also began putting more focus on newer country tracks. + +Rhythmic (2009-2011) +On September 4, 2009, at Noon, after a continued struggle with its country format, WDTW flipped to rhythmic adult contemporary as The Beat of Detroit. The final song on “The Fox” was “Shuttin’ Detroit Down” by John Rich, while the first song on “The Beat” was “Into the Groove” by Detroit native Madonna. The station featured a mix of current and hit rhythmic and dance music, mostly from the 1980s and 1990s, with some 1970s disco hits. + +By 2010, with CBS Radio's WVMV's flip to top 40, and sister station WKQI's shift in a mainstream top 40 direction, WDTW began pivoting towards a conventional rhythmic contemporary direction by adding more current music and cutting back on the heavy amount of gold product. WDTW-FM still featured many Rhythmic AC elements in its presentation. The station reintroduced some 1980s and 1990s gold into rotation, usually two or three songs per hour, although 1970s disco music was not part of the format. The station also introduced the "Back In The Day Lunch Party" at Noon and "90s at 9" every evening. In addition, it blended in a few Dance cuts as well. Sean "Hollywood" Hamilton's syndicated Remix Top 30 aired on Sunday evenings. The Beat also brought in some well known personalities including WDRQ vet Lisa Lisa Orlando for middays, Joe Rosati of Z100 in New York for afternoons, and Jevon Hollywood, also from WDRQ, for late nights. Mornings and evenings were voicetracked by Paul "Cubby" Bryant of WKTU in New York and Billy The Kidd of 106.1 Kiss-FM in Dallas. Former WDRQ morning host Jay Towers was hired as program director. + +Ratings throughout The Beat's history were moderate, usually peaking in the mid-3 share range or lower. In the last ratings book as a Rhythmic Top 40, WDTW-FM was ranked #18 with a 2.2 share of the market. + +Classic rock (2011-2017) + +On November 4, 2011, at 10 a.m., WDTW-FM changed its format back to classic rock, branded as 106.7 The D. The final song on "The Beat" was "End of the Road" by Boyz II Men, while the first song on "The D" was "For Those About To Rock (We Salute You)" by AC/DC. + +The station described the new format as "The Next Generation of Classic Rock," meaning the station included more 1980s rock, along with the usual 1970s titles, as well as early 1990s' rock material. The station remained automated until early 2012, when the station began assembling a DJ staff. WDTW-FM brought in radio vet Sheri Donovan for middays and WGRD vet Dave Dahmer for afternoons. Alan Cox hosted the morning drive time shift live from a studio in Cleveland. + +Adult hits (2017) +On May 26, 2017, WDTW-FM segued to a variety hits format, while still branding as "The D." Following the switch, the station's ratings share fell from 2.7 to a 2.2 share, putting it at #19 in the market by October 2017. + +Alternative rock (2017-2019) + +On November 20, 2017, at 9:24 p.m., after playing "Closing Time" by Semisonic, WDTW-FM flipped to an alternative rock format as Alt 106-7, launching with a 10,000 songs commercial-free promotion. The first song was "Seven Nation Army" by Detroit band The White Stripes. The new format gave Detroit its first alternative rock station since WMGC-FM's period as 105.1 The Edge from 1997 to 1999, while also co-existing with Bell Media's active rock-leaning alternative station CIMX (which targets Windsor). + +It was speculated that the flip was intended to preempt Entercom's WDZH from flipping to alternative under the company's own Alt brand, which it had done with Amp Radio stations in several other markets immediately after its merger with CBS Radio (the station would instead switch to soft adult contemporary, before finally switching to alternative in 2020 in reaction to CIMX's flip to country). + +Classic rock (2019-present) +WDTW-FM's alternative rock format had fallen to a 1.5 share by January 2019, putting it well behind Beasley's market-leading WRIF, which airs an active rock format. On March 1, 2019, at Noon, after playing "In Bloom" by Nirvana, the station began stunting with a loop of "It's a Long Way to the Top (If You Wanna Rock 'n' Roll)" by AC/DC. At 1 p.m., the station returned to classic rock once more as 106.7 WLLZ, Detroit's Wheels, reviving a brand that had previously been used on WDZH prior to its switch to smooth jazz in 1995. The first song on the revived WLLZ was "Back in Black", also by AC/DC. + +The station's call letters were officially changed to WLLZ on March 8, 2019. Both the WLLZ and WDTW-FM call signs were briefly warehoused by a sister station in North Carolina. + +HD Radio +WLLZ broadcasts in the HD Radio format. WLLZ's HD2 subchannel has changed several times since its inception in 2006. From January 2006 to December 2009, the HD2 channel was known as "The Mother Trucker" and featured a mix of country and rock music. In December 2009, the format was changed to Clear Channel's Pride Radio which featured dance music geared toward the LGBT community. + +On November 4, 2011, after the main frequency changed to classic rock, the HD2 format changed as well. This time, it began carrying Clear Channel's "Alternative Project" feed from iHeartRadio. The HD2 channel's format was changed again to the "Rock Nation Top 20" from iHeartRadio after the analog/HD1 channel's format switched to alternative rock. + +Sometime after the main frequency switched to "Alt 106.7," WDTW-FM added an HD3 subchannel known as "WLLZ-Detroit Wheels" which played oldies and has remained in place even after the main channel adopted the "WLLZ" branding. + +With the main channel's switch to classic rock on March 1, 2019, the HD2 channel briefly switched to a feed of iHeartRadio's Smells Like the 90s channel (which focused on alternative rock from the 1990s), before switching to a rhythmic contemporary format as Wild 106.7 in July. + +References + +External links + +Michiguide.com: Listing for WDTW-FM + +LLZ (FM) +Radio stations established in 1960 +1960 establishments in Michigan +IHeartMedia radio stations +Classic rock radio stations in the United States +Stéphane Bernadis (, born 23 February 1974) is a French former pair skater. With skating partner Sarah Abitbol, he is the 2000 World bronze medalist, the 2000 Grand Prix Final silver medalist, a seven-time European medalist (two silver and five bronze medals), and a ten-time French national champion. + +Career +Bernadis began skating at age eight because of his mother, English skater Donna Davies. He teamed up with Sarah Abitbol in 1992. Abitbol/Bernadis were coached by Jean-Roland Racle early in their career and then by Stanislav Leonovich in Paris. + +At the 2000 World Championships in Nice, France, Bernadis said he was attacked by an unknown assailant with a razor on March 28 when he opened his hotel room door – resulting in an eight-inch cut down his left forearm. Bernadis said he had received a death threat three weeks earlier. At the event, he and Abitbol won the bronze medal, becoming the first French pair skaters to win a World medal since Andrée Brunet / Pierre Brunet won gold in 1932. + +An injury to Bernadis led the pair to withdraw after the short program from the 2001 World Championships. They qualified for the 2002 Olympics by winning the 2001 Golden Spin of Zagreb. Abitbol/Bernadis withdrew from the 2002 Olympics after Abitbol's Achilles tendon ruptured in practice – she underwent surgery and was off the ice for six months. After the 2003 European Championships, the pair changed coaches, moving to Jean-Christophe Simond. + +Abitbol/Bernadis worked on throw triple Axels. + +Personal life +Bernadis and his wife, Elisabeth, have a daughter named Ava. + +Programs +(with Abitbol) + +Results +with Abitbol + +GP: Champions Series / Grand Prix + +References + +External links + + + Official website of Abitbol / Bernadis + +1974 births +Living people +Sportspeople from Boulogne-Billancourt +Olympic figure skaters for France +Figure skaters at the 1998 Winter Olympics +French male pair skaters +French people of English descent +World Figure Skating Championships medalists +European Figure Skating Championships medalists +Arturo García Ortiz (born July 19, 1974) is a Mexican luchador or professional wrestler best known under the ring name Rey Bucanero. Ortiz, as Rey Bucanero, has worked for Consejo Mundial de Lucha Libre (CMLL) since 1996. His ring name is Spanish for "Buccaneer King", which was originally reflected in his mask that featured a skull face and an eye patch. Ortiz was unmasked in 1999 and has worked unmasked ever since. + +He is the nephew of Pirata Morgan, from whom he took the Pirate character, as well as the nephew of Hombre Bala and El Verdungo. While he has primarily worked for CMLL through most of his career he has made appearances in the United States, most notably for the World Wrestling Federation and Total Nonstop Action Wrestling as well as in Japan for New Japan Pro-Wrestling (NJPW). + +Rey Bucanero, along with Último Guerrero and Tarzan Boy were the founders of the long running Los Guerreros del Infierno ("The Infernal Warriors") group in 2001. Bucanero later left the group to become a member of La Peste Negra and later on help found La Fuerza TRT with El Terrible and El Texano Jr. and the trio TGR (Terriblemente Guapo el Rey, "Terribly Handsome King"; with El Terrible and Shocker). For the majority of the first decade of the 21st century Rey Bucanero and Último Guerrero formed a very popular and successful tag team, a team that was voted "Best Tag Team of the Decade (2000–2009) " in the Wrestling Observer Newsletter awards. + +He is a former four time holder of the CMLL World Tag Team Championship, has held the NWA World Historic Light Heavyweight Championship twice and the CMLL World Light Heavyweight Championship and CMLL World Trios Championship on one occasion. He has also won CMLL's CMLL Torneo Gran Alternativa and Leyenda de Azul tournaments. + +Personal life +Arturo García Ortiz was born on July 19, 1974, in Mexico City, Distrito Federal into the Ortiz family which would later have several family members become professional wrestlers. Three of Ortiz's uncles were professional wrestlers and often took him to wrestling shows when he was younger. He is the nephew of Aurelio Ortiz (better known under the ring names Hombre Bala and later "The Monsther"), Pedro Ortiz (best known as Pirata Morgan) and Francisco Ortiz (best known under the name "El Verdungo"), all of whom inspired him to become a wrestler and trained García for his in-ring career. García is the cousin of professional wrestlers El Hijo de Pirata Morgan (Antheus Ortiz Chávez), Pirata Morgan Jr. (real name not revealed), Hombre Bala Jr. (real name not revealed) and the most recent wrestler to work as "The Monsther" (real name not revealed). + +García moved in with his uncle Pedro Ortiz when his parents divorced. From that point on his uncle brought him to Arena México, home of Empresa Mexicana de Lucha Libre (EMLL), for whom Ortiz worked at the time. Whole spending time backstage he would be introduced to the other side of professional wrestling, being trained from a very early age by all three of his uncles. + +Professional wrestling career +Ortiz made his in-ring debut on November 18, 1991, at the age of 17, as the wrestling masked character "Rey Bucanero Jr." ("Buccaneer King Jr."). Records are unclear if there was a wrestler known as "Rey Bucanero". He performed as "Rey Bucanero Jr." from 1991 through 1994, working primarily smaller shows in Puebla City and other smaller venues. In 1995 he briefly wrestle as "El Hijo de Pirata Morgan" and "Pirata Morgan Jr.", but that stint did not last long, leaving those names behind him on case his uncle Pedro Ortiz's sons wanted to follow in his footsteps when they got older and wanted to wrestle as Pirata Morgan Jr. and El Hijo de Pirata Morgan. + +In 1995 he shortened his ring name to simply "Rey Bucanero". The first indication that CMLL had faith in the Rey Bucanero character came in 1996 when the promotion teamed him up with Emilio Charles Jr. for the 1996 Gran Alternativa tournament, which the duo won by defeating Héctor Garza and Mr. Niebla in the finals. The two were joined by El Satánico and together the trio defeated Apolo Dantés, Black Warrior, and Dr. Wagner Jr. in a tournament to win the vacant CMLL World Trios Championship. Their reign only lasted 39 days as they lost the championship to Atlantis, Lizmark and Mr. Niebla on April 29, 1997. + +In late 1998 Ortiz was one of many Mexican wrestlers who began working for the World Wrestling Federation (WWF, now known as WWE) as part of the WWF Super Astros show, WWF's attempt to expand into the Latin American markets. On Super Astros Ortiz was known under the ring name Rey "Pirata" Ortiz and wrestled without his mask on. He later stated that he wished the WWF had more respect for the mask, but that a paycheck was a paycheck so he did not complain about it. His stint on Super Astros ended in early 1999. + +Months after he returned to CMLL full-time Rey Bucanero was one of eight competitors in a Ruleta de la Muerte ("Roulette of death"), or "Losers advance" tournament. After losing the first two matches Rey Bucanero faced Shocker in the finals with both wrestlers putting their mask on the line under Lucha de Apuestas. or "bet match", rules. In the end Shocker pinned Rey Bucanero, forcing Bucanero to remove his mask and never wear it again. + +Los Infernales + +In 1999 El Satánico reformed the group Los Infernales, recruiting Último Guerrero and Rey Bucanero; Rey's uncle Pirata Morgan had been part of the original Los Infernales. Working with the veteran El Satánico allowed both Rey Bucanero and Último Guerrero to rise up the ranks as well as develop into a regular tag team in CMLL. In the summer of 2000 Bucanero and Guerrero were one of sixteen teams entered into a tournament for the vacant CMLL World Tag Team Championship. In the end they defeated Villano IV and Mr. Niebla to win the championship. + +Throughout the summer of 2000 El Satánico had been working a storyline against Tarzan Boy, which was used to turn both Bucanero and Último Guerrero against El Satánico. Bucanero, Guerrero and Tarzan Boy claimed that they deserved the name Los Infernales and that El Satánico was holding them back. For the storyline El Satánico recruited two other wrestlers to even the numbers, which on TV was presented as if he used his "Satanic powers" to turn wrestler Rencor Latino into Averno (Spanish for "Hell") and transformed the Astro Rey Jr. into a character known as Mephisto. + +When Tarzan Boy was injured and unable to wrestle Bucanero and Guerrero recruited Máscara Mágica to even the numbers. The storyline between the two factions reaches its high point at the CMLL 68th Anniversary Show where all seven wrestlers faced off in a steel cage match. The stipulation of the match was that the winning side would gain the rights to use the name Los Infernales while the loser on the opposite side would be forced to unmask or have their hair shaved off. In the end El Satánico pinned Máscara Mágica, forcing him to unmask. After losing the match Guerrero, Bucanero and Tarzan Boy became known collectively as Los Guerreros del Infierno (The Infernal Soldiers). + +Los Guerreros del Infierno + +After the feud with El Satánico ended Bucanero and Guerrero moved on to a storyline feud with Negro Casas and El Hijo del Santo over the CMLL World Tag Team Championship. After a match with an inconclusive finish in October, Los Guerreros lost to Santo and Casas on November 2, 2011. In 2002, Guerrero and Bucanero regained their tag team title from Santo and Casas. defeating them on May 31 to become three-time champions. The team successfully defended their title against Damián 666 and Halloween of La Familia de Tijuana in July. Los Guerreros del Infierno then began feuding with Vampiro Canadiense and Shocker. Los Guerreros successfully defended their tag team championship against the duo but Bucanero lost his hair to Vampiro in a Luchas de Apuestas match in December. + +In 2003, they retained the championship against Vampiro and Lizmark, Jr. and Negro Casas and Perro Aguayo, Jr. but were defeated in December by the team of Shocker and the newly arrived L.A. Park. Los Guerreros regained the tag team championship in early 2004, but Bucanero suffered a knee injury and was temporarily replaced by Black Warrior. Los Guerreros lost the tag team title to Atlantis and Blue Panther on June 25. Bucanero and new Los Guerreros member Olímpico challenged Atlantis and Panther for the tag team championship on the first Arena México show of 2005 but they lost when Olímpico injured his neck while attempting a dive. + +Bucanero and Olímpico teamed up to unsuccessfully challenge the visiting Hiroshi Tanahashi and Shinsuke Nakamura for the IWGP World Tag Team Championship. After Atlantis turned heel and joined the group, they became known as Los Guerreros de la Atlántida, it was teased that Bucanero would break up with Guerrero but Bucanero stayed with the group and Los Guerreros feuded with Perro Aguayo, Jr.'s Los Perros del Mal faction into 2006. At the end of April, he teamed with Tarzan Boy to win a double hair vs. hair match against Mr. Águila and Damián 666 in the main event of the 50. Aniversario de Arena México show. + +The following week, he teamed with Atlantis against Último Dragón and Keiji Mutoh but his team lost after Atlantis hit Rey Bucanero by accident. For the following weeks, Bucanero kept having trouble with his teammates and magazines hinted at a possible face turn. Later that month, Averno and Mephisto turned on him during an Arena México match. Shortly afterwards, Tarzan Boy and Guerrero turned on him as well, ripping his tights, signifying he was no longer a member of Los Guerreros. + +On July 14, he defeated Guerrero for his CMLL World Light Heavyweight Championship, ending Guerrero's three and a half year title reign. He later feuded with Kenzo Suzuki and Último Guerrero. In 2008 Bucanero participated in Total Nonstop Action Wrestling's World X Cup as a part of Team Mexico, who ended up winning the whole tournament. By early 2010 Bucanero returned to Los Guerreros del Atlantida. + +La Peste Negra + +In July and August 2010 Rey Bucanero filled in for Mr. Niebla while he was out with a knee injury and teamed up with La Peste Negra ("The Black Plague") members Negro Casas and El Felino. When he began teaming with La Peste Negra Bucanero wore ring gear that looked more like Jack Sparrow from the Pirates of the Caribbean movie series and less like his fellow Guerreros de la Atlantida members. He was also given a mascot, a Mini-Estrella wearing a parrot outfit that accompanied him to the ring. The parrot was later named Zacarias. + +In August 2010, Rey Bucanero announced that he had left Los Guerreros and joined La Peste Negra because Los Guerreros were more interested in teaming with Olímpico than him. On December 3 at Sin Piedad 2010 Bucanero defeated Los Invasores leader Mr. Águila in a Lucha de Apuesta match, forcing Mr. Águila to have his orange mohawk shaved off. On January 29, 2011, Bucanero made an appearance for American promotion Pro Wrestling Guerrilla (PWG), during the WrestleReunion 5 weekend, in a match, where he was defeated by Mr. Águila. + +TRT / TGR + +In April 2011 Bucanero left La Peste Negra to form a new group with El Texano, Jr. and El Terrible, abandoning Zacarias in the process. The following month, the group was named La Fuerza TRT. On June 21 Bucanero defeated El Hijo del Fantasma to win the NWA World Historic Light Heavyweight Championship. On July 31, 2011, Bucanero and Atlantis made an appearance for American promotion Chikara, losing to F.I.S.T. ("Friends In Similar Tights"; Chuck Taylor and Johnny Gargano) via disqualification, when Gargano faked taking a low blow from Atlantis. + +On September 30 at CMLL's 78th Anniversary Show, Bucanero took part in a ten-man hair vs. hair steel cage match, which came down to Bucanero and former Peste Negra partner El Felino. In the end, El Felino managed to pin Bucanero, forcing Bucanero to have all his hair shaved off. In October 2011, Bucanero became one of four CMLL wrestlers featured in an A&E Latinoamericano documentary series titled El Luchador. When El Texano, Jr. left CMLL in late November, Bucanero and El Terrible chose Tiger as the new third member of La Fuerza TRT. + +On June 4, 2013, Bucanero's near two-year reign as the NWA World Historic Light Heavyweight Champion ended, when he lost the title to Diamante Azul. On August 11, Bucanero and Terrible removed Tiger from the La Fuerza TRT group and replaced him with Vangelis. With Vangelis joining the group, the stable was renamed TRT: La Máquina de la Destrucción ("TRT: The Machine of Destruction"). On September 14, Bucanero captured the CMLL World Tag Team Championship alongside Tama Tonga, while on tour with New Japan Pro-Wrestling (NJPW). Bucanero's tour with NJPW lasted until September 29, and upon his return to CMLL, Bucanero and Tonga began teaming with El Terrible as "Bullet Club Latinoamerica". + +On October 18, Bucanero was sidelined with an injury and both he and Tonga were stripped of the CMLL World Tag Team Championship. On March 8, 2015, Bucanero defeated La Sombra in a tournament final to win the NWA World Historic Light Heavyweight Championship for the second time. On April 3, Bucanero, El Terrible and Shocker formed a new trio named TGR (Terriblemente Guapo el Rey, "Terribly Handsome King"). + +Championships and accomplishments +Consejo Mundial de Lucha Libre +CMLL World Light Heavyweight Championship (1 time) +CMLL World Tag Team Championship (4 times) – with Último Guerrero (3) and Tama Tonga (1) +CMLL World Trios Championship (1 time) – with El Satánico and Emilio Charles, Jr. +NWA World Historic Light Heavyweight Championship (2 times) +Carnaval Incredible Tournament (2000) – with Último Guerrero and Mr. Niebla +Copa de Arena Mexico (1999) – with El Satánico and Último Guerrero +Torneo Gran Alternativa (1996 (II)) – with Emilio Charles, Jr. +Leyenda de Azul: 2006 +Federación Universitaria de Lucha Libre +FULL World Championship (1 time,current) +International Wrestling Revolution Group +Copa Higher Power (1999) – with Astro Rey Jr., Máscara Mágica, El Satánico and Último Guerrero +Pro Wrestling Illustrated +PWI ranked him #39 of the 500 best singles wrestlers of the PWI 500 in 2005 +Total Nonstop Action Wrestling +TNA World X Cup (2008) – with Volador Jr., Último Guerrero and Averno +Wrestling Observer Newsletter awards +Best Tag Team of the Decade (2000–2009) – with Último Guerrero + +Luchas de Apuestas record + +Footnotes + +References + +External links + +1974 births +Bullet Club members +Living people +Mexican male professional wrestlers +Professional wrestlers from Mexico City +20th-century professional wrestlers +21st-century professional wrestlers +CMLL World Light Heavyweight Champions +CMLL World Tag Team Champions +CMLL World Trios Champions +NWA World Historic Light Heavyweight Champions +Sulphur Springs Municipal Airport is a city-owned, public-use airport located two nautical miles (4 km) northwest of the central business district of Sulphur Springs, a city in Hopkins County, Texas, United States. It is included in the National Plan of Integrated Airport Systems for 2011–2015, which categorized it as a general aviation facility. + +It was named Texas Airport of the Year for 2003 by the Texas Department of Transportation Aviation Division. + +Facilities and aircraft +Sulphur Springs Municipal Airport covers an area of 197 acres (80 ha) at an elevation of 489 feet (149 m) above mean sea level. It has one runway designated 1/19 with a concrete surface measuring 5,001 by 75 feet (1,524 x 23 m). + +For the 12-month period ending March 7, 2009, the airport had 17,910 aircraft operations, an average of 49 per day: 97% general aviation, 3% military, and <1% air taxi. At that time there were 74 aircraft based at this airport: 88% single-engine, 8% multi-engine, 1% jet, 1% helicopter, and 1% ultralight. + +References + +External links + Sulphur Springs Airport (City of Sulphur Springs website) + at Texas DOT airport directory + Aerial image as of February 1995 from USGS The National Map + + +Airports in Texas +Transportation in Hopkins County, Texas +Buildings and structures in Hopkins County, Texas +Dolon Nor (; , Doloon nuur, seven lakes; also: To-lun, Dolonnur), is a town and the county seat of Duolun County, Xilin Gol League in the Inner Mongolia Autonomous region, China. It is of historical importance because the remnants of Shangdu, the summer capital of Kublai Khan and the following Mongol emperors of the Yuan dynasty (13th and 14th century), are located some 28 kilometers (17 miles) northwest of the modern town. Beginning in the 17th century, the Manchu emperors of the Qing dynasty developed the city as a religious center. + +In the Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition (1911), the city is described as follows: + +Another, longer description of the city is in writings of Évariste Huc (1813–1860), a Frenchman who stayed there in 1845 on his way to Lhasa (which he reached after 18 months of travelling). + +In 1933, the town was the object of fighting between the Japanese and their Manchukuoan puppet troops and the Chahar People's Anti-Japanese Army. + +See also + Actions in Inner Mongolia (1933–36) + +References + +Populated places in Inner Mongolia +Langreo (; ) is a municipality and town in northern Spain, in Asturias. It is the 4th largest town of Asturias with 43,000 inhabitants. Langreo is located in the centre of Asturias, approximately south-east of Oviedo. It was an important mining and metallurgical center. + +In the neighbourhood fruit and cider are produced, and there are still important coal mines, foundries, and factories for the manufacture of coarse cloth. + +History + +According to a legend Langreo was the place where the Moorish governor Munuza was killed while trying to flee from Asturias at the beginning of the Reconquest. Langreo was settled by the Romans, who built a large Roman bridge that is not conserved today. + +In the past, it was one of the most important mining and metallurgical points of Spain since the 18th century, and it was also well known because of workers struggles and its cultural life. The 3rd railway to be built in the Iberian Peninsula was the FC of Langreo. The Factory of La Felguera was one of the most important iron works centers in Spain, and the Langreo mines was well known in whole the country. + +Because of the Spanish "Industrial Restructuring", Langreo lost its industrial importance, but today the town hosts Bayer, where 100% of the acetylsalicylic acid of the German enterprise are produced. Langreo also holds the technologies centre Valnalón. + +Langreo has historic monuments like the church of San Esteban, the Quintana Tower or the Sanctuary of Carbayu. Also preserves good examples of its industrial heritage and it hosts the Siderurgy Museum Of Asturias within the old Felguera Factory, the Samuño Valley and Railway Mining Museum, and the art gallery Pinacoteca Eduardo Úrculo. + +Langreo celebrates fiestas of San Pedro and Santiago, and special gastronomic days: Carnival (February) Cider (April) and Fabada (December). + +The largest town is Langreo formed by the most important districts: La Felguera (20,000 inhabitants), Sama (10,000), and Riaño, Ciaño, Lada and Barros, also known as parishes. + +Parishes +There are eight parishes (administrative divisions) by population: +La Felguera +Sama +Riaño +Ciaño +Lada +Tuilla +Barros +La Venta + +Politics + +People + +David Villa, footballer +Manuel Mejuto González, football referee +Pedro Duro, businessman +Aurelius of Asturias, King of Asturias +Gaspar García Laviana, soldier +Mario Cotelo, footballer +Alberto Coto García, mental calculator +Dámaso Alonso, poet +Narciso Ibáñez Menta, actor +Jesús Fernández Duro, sportman +María Neira, WHO doctor +Carlos Álvarez-Nóvoa, actor + +Gallery + +References + +External links + +Ayuntamiento de Langreo + + +Municipalities in Asturias +Dicrocoelium dendriticum, the lancet liver fluke, is a parasite fluke that tends to live in cattle or other grazing mammals. + +History of discovery +Much of what is presently known about Dicrocoelium dendriticum is the result of the work of the naturalist Wendell Krull. While D. dendriticum was discovered by Rudolphi in 1819 and D. hospes was discovered by Loos in 1899, the full life cycle was not known until Krull and C.R. Mapes published a series of papers from 1951-1953 detailing their observations and experiments. It was known that D. dendriticum affected sheep, but everything else was a mystery. The first link in the chain was the discovery of the first intermediate host, the land snail Cochlicopa lubrica (synonym: Cionella lubrica). Next came the discovery that the slime balls coughed up by the snails could be a potential method of transfer of the parasite. Shortly thereafter, the ant Formica fusca was found to be the second intermediate host by which sheep were infected. Their work is the foundation of modern understanding of the parasite. + +Clinical presentation in humans +Dicrocoelium dendriticum along with Dicrocoelium hospes are part of a group of flukes that can infect the bile ducts of humans. Because the bodies of these parasites are long and narrow, infections are generally confined to the more distal parts of the bile ducts. As a result, most Dicrocoelium dendriticum infections of the biliary tree produce only mild symptoms. These symptoms can include biliary colic and general digestive disturbances, including bloating and diarrhea. However, in heavier infections, bile ducts and the biliary epithelium may become enlarged in addition to the generation of fibrous tissue surrounding the ducts, and as a result, causing an enlarged liver (hepatomegaly) or inflammation of the liver (cirrhosis). In one unique case, an infection with Dicrocoelium dendriticum was associated with a skin rash urticaria. + +Transmission +Due to the highly specific nature of this parasite's life cycle, human infections are generally rare. Ruminants such as cows and sheep are usually the definitive host, but other herbivorous mammals and humans can also serve as definitive hosts through ingestion of infected ants. One definitive case involved a man who ingested bottled water contaminated by infected ants. + +Reservoirs +The main reservoirs for Dicrocoelium dendriticum are sheep, cows, land snails and ants. However, Dicrocoelium dendriticum has also been found in goats, pigs and even llamas and alpacas. + +In ruminants +Ruminants are the main definitive host of this fluke but other herbivorous animals, carnivores, and humans can be accidental definitive host. Most infections, especially in cows, are asymptomatic but the effect on the liver depends on the number of flukes and the length of infection. Since the fluke migrates up the biliary duct — but does not penetrate the gut wall or liver tissue — long infections may cause hypertrophy of the bile duct and liver lesion, even in the absence of symptoms. While infections with D. dendriticum are usually symptom free, some animals may show anemia, edema, emaciation, and liver cirrhosis. However, many of the symptoms of dicroceliosis are similar to those of other gastro-, intestinal-, and lung-nematode infections. + +The diagnosis of D. dendriticum flukes is mainly from the recovery of adults in liver during necropsy or detecting eggs in animal feces. + +There is some evidence connecting decreased liver function from the trematode infection with pregnancy toxaemia and mastitis in ewes when combined with other risk factors. + +Treatment can be difficult due to the fluke's complex life-cycle. Various antihelminths, especially Netobimin, have been shown to be effective treatment when an entire herd is infected. Animal husbandry practices can decrease the incidence of infection. This includes the avoidance of animal grazing early in the day or late in the evening, when ants are more likely to climb to the top of the grass blade. + +Incubation period +The incubation period for Dicrocoelium dendriticum is currently unknown. + +Morphology + +Dicrocoelium dendriticum has a similar morphology to Clonorchis sinensis, the Chinese liver fluke. Dicrocoelium dendriticum is distinguished by lobed testes in the anterior of the body, as opposed to Clonorchis sinensis whose testes are located in the posterior. They both are flat and have a characteristic taper at the anterior and posterior ends. The anterior is distinguished by an oral sucker at the point, an acetabulum and the testes. The posterior is where the uterus lies. In the parasite's midsection lie the vitelline glands that are involved in egg formation. + +Life cycle + +Dicrocoelium dendriticum spends its adult life inside the liver of its host. After mating, the eggs are excreted in the feces. + +The first intermediate host, the terrestrial snail (Cochlicopa lubrica in the United States), consumes the feces, and becomes infected by the larval parasites. The larvae (or miracidium) drill through the wall of the gut and settle in its digestive tract, where they develop into a juvenile stage. The snail attempts to defend itself by walling the parasites off in cysts, which it then excretes and leaves behind in the grass or substrate. + +The second intermediate host, an ant (Formica fusca in the United States), uses the trail of snail slime as a source of moisture. The ant then swallows a cyst loaded with hundreds of juvenile lancet flukes. The parasites enter the gut and then drift through its body. + +Most of the cercariae encyst in the haemocoel of the ant and mature into metacercariae, but one moves to the sub-esophageal ganglion (a cluster of nerve cells underneath the esophagus). There, the fluke takes control of the ant's actions by manipulating these nerves. As evening approaches and the air cools, the infected ant is drawn away from other members of the colony and upward to the top of a blade of grass. Once there, it clamps its mandibles onto the top of the blade and stays there until dawn. Afterward, it goes back to its normal activity at the ant colony. If the host ant were to be subjected to the heat of the direct sun, it would die along with the parasite. + +Night after night, the ant goes back to the top of a blade of grass until a grazing animal comes along and eats the blade, ingesting the ant along with it, thus putting lancet flukes back inside their host. They live out their adult lives inside the animal, reproducing so that the cycle begins again. Infected ants may contain 100 metacercariae, and a high percentage of ants may be infected. Typical infections in cattle may be in the tens of thousands of adult worms. + +Diagnostic tests + +Traditionally, diagnosis for dicrocoeliasis infection involves the identification of Dicrocoelium dendriticum eggs in the faeces of a human or other animal. However, in humans, eggs in the stool may be a result of ingesting raw infected animal liver and may not in fact indicate dicrocoeliasis. Therefore, examining bile or duodenal fluid for eggs is a more accurate diagnostic technique in combination with a liver-free diet. + +In animals, diagnosis has traditionally involved stool examination or post-mortem examination of the liver. Recently, an ELISA using a Dicrocoelium dendriticum antigen was able to identify cases of dicrocoeliasis in sheep in Italy 28 days earlier than traditional methods. + +Management and therapy +Because human infections with Dicrocoelium dendriticum are so rare, there are multiple suggestions for treatment. The standard treatment is an anthelmintic such as Praziquantel, Triclabendazole, or Mirazid. + +Epidemiology +Dicrocoeliasis is believed to be endemic or potentially endemic in 30 countries. Dicrocoelium dendriticum is found throughout Europe (former U.S.S.R., Switzerland, Italy, Germany, Spain, Turkey), the Middle East (Iran), Asia (China, Japan, Vietnam), Africa (Ghana, Nigeria, Sierra Leone) and in North and South America and Australia. The parasite tends to be found in areas that favor the intermediate hosts, such as fields with dry, chalky and alkaline soils. + +Public health prevention strategies +Current public health prevention strategies have involved the condemnation of contaminated livers so as to eliminate any possibility for food-borne infection. + +In addition, in 2007 the World Health Organization included Dicrocoelium dendriticum on its list of organisms to target with its Foodborne Disease Burden Epidemiology Reference Group. + +In addition, a study completed in Sweden combining data about the Dicrocoelium dendriticum prevalence and landscape data to discover in which landscape the parasite thrives. It was found that grazing land near forest areas (good for mollusks) and dry pastures with little other biodiversity (good for ants) both increased parasite prevalence. + +References + +External links +Lancet Fluke (Dicrocoelium lanceolatum) at The Living World of Mollusks +Cartoon illustration of the cycle of Dicrocoelium dendriticum. + +Animals described in 1819 +Plagiorchiida +Parasites of mammals +Bovine diseases +Suicide-inducing parasitism +Veterinary helminthology +Taxa named by Karl Rudolphi +EMX or EmX may refer to: + emx+gcc, a DOS extender and DOS and OS/2 programming environment + Emerald Express (EmX), a bus rapid transit system in Lane County, Oregon + EuroManx, a defunct airline which held ICAO airline designator EMX + El Maitén Airport, an airport in Argentina which has IATA airport code EMX + Electribe EMX, music production station by Korg + +See also +EMX1, a human gene +EMX2, a human gene +Miles Poindexter (April 22, 1868September 21, 1946) was an American lawyer and politician. As a Republican and briefly a Progressive, he served one term as a United States representative from 1909 to 1911, and two terms as a United States senator from 1911 to 1923, representing the state of Washington. Poindexter also served as United States Ambassador to Peru during the presidential administrations of Warren Harding and Calvin Coolidge. + +Early life +Poindexter was born in Memphis, Tennessee, the son of Josephine (Anderson) Poindexter and William B. Poindexter. His parents were residents of Malvern Hill in Henrico County, Virginia, and his father was an American Civil War veteran of the Confederate States Army. Poindexter was raised in Virginia, and attended the Fancy Hill Academy in Rockbridge County, Virginia. He then attended Washington and Lee University in Lexington, Virginia, from which he graduated with an LL.B. degree in 1891. + +Political career +In 1908, Poindexter was elected to the U.S. House. He served one term (1909–1911), and was reelected in 1910. He resigned before his new term began in March 1911 because the state legislature elected him to the U.S. Senate. He was reelected in 1916, and served from 1911 to 1923. Poindexter became a Progressive Party member in 1912, but returned to the Republicans in 1915. Poindexter was an unsuccessful candidate for the Republican nomination for president in 1920, and for reelection to the Senate in 1922. In 1923, Poindexter was appointed Ambassador to Peru. He served until 1928, when he returned to Washington and waged an unsuccessful campaign for the Senate. + +Legal career +After he graduated, Poindexter settled in Walla Walla, Washington, where he was admitted to the bar and began the practice of law. In 1892 he became the prosecuting attorney of Walla Walla County. He moved to Spokane, Washington in 1897 where he continued the practice of law. He served as the assistant prosecuting attorney for Spokane County from 1898 to 1904, and as a judge of the superior court from 1904 to 1908. + +Political career +He was elected as a Republican to the Sixty-first Congress, and served from March 4, 1909 to March 3, 1911 representing Washington's newly created 3rd congressional district. He was reelected in 1910, but resigned in 1911 because the Washington State Legislature elected him to the U.S. Senate. He was reelected in 1916, and served from March 4, 1911 to March 3, 1923. Poindexter left the Republican Party in 1913 to join the Progressive Party, rejoining the Republicans in 1915. + +During World War I, Poindexter moved away from supporting progressive causes and led several efforts that questioned the patriotism of German-Americans and attempted to keep them from wartime leadership positions in the military. In a highly-publicized instance, Poindexter accused German-born Colonel Carl Reichmann (1859–1937), a distinguished Army officer who had served since 1881, of being pro-German and used the legislative process to block Reichmann's promotion to brigadier general. Reichmann had become a US citizen in 1887 and the promotion was supported by American Expeditionary Forces commander John J. Pershing, Hugh L. Scott, the Army Chief of Staff, and Newton D. Baker, the Secretary of War, but they were unable to overcome Poindexter's opposition and Reichmann remained a colonel. Poindexter also played a role in instigating the First Red Scare by accusing the Wilson administration of being infested with Bolshevism and accusing United States Supreme Court Associate Justice Louis Brandeis of being a communist. Poindexter was a target of reformers and progressives in 1922, and lost his bid for reelection to the Democratic nominee, Representative Clarence Dill. + +Committee chairmanships +During his Senate tenure, Poindexter served as chairman of the following committees: + + United States Senate Committee on Expenditures in the Interior Department (Sixty-second Congress) + United States Senate Committee on Mines and Mining (Sixty-second Congress, Sixty-sixth Congress and Sixty-seventh Congress) + United States Senate Committee on Pacific Islands and Puerto Rico (Sixty-second Congress) + United States Senate Committee on Expenditures in the War Department (Sixty-third Congress and Sixty-fourth Congress) + United States Senate Committee on Indian Depredations (Sixty-fifth Congress) + +Later life +Poindexter ran in the 1920 Republican Party presidential primaries, but was not a serious contender for the party's nomination. He received the votes of 20 delegates on the first ballot at the 1920 Republican National Convention, and the nomination went to Warren G. Harding on the 10th ballot. After he lost his 1922 campaign for reelection to the Senate, in 1923 Harding appointed Poindexter as United States Ambassador to Peru. He served until 1928, when he resigned and returned to Washington. He was an unsuccessful candidate that year for the United States Senate. + +Retirement and death +After the death of his wife, Poindexter returned to his home, "Elk Cliff" in Greenlee, near Natural Bridge Station, Virginia. He died there on September 21, 1946, and was buried at Fairmount Memorial Park in Spokane. + +Family +In 1892, Poindexter married Elizabeth Gale Page (1866–1929) of Walla Walla. They were the parents of a son, Gale Aylett Poindexter (1893–1976). Elizabeth Gale Page was the granddaughter of Joseph Gale, an executive of the Provisional Government of Oregon. She and Miles Poindexter were the aunt and uncle of actress Gale Page. + +Poindexter remarried in 1936, becoming the husband of Elinor Jackson Junkin Latane, the widow of John Holladay Latane, a professor at Johns Hopkins University. + +See also + List of United States senators who switched parties + +References + +Sources + +Books + +Newspapers + +Internet + +External sources + +Archives + Miles Poindexter Papers. 1897-1940. 189.79 cubic feet (442 boxes). + Miles Poindexter photograph collection. circa 1910-1920. .12 cubic feet (4 folders). 162 photographic prints. + Thomas Burke papers. 1875-1925. 24.78 cubic feet (58 boxes). + Austin E. Griffiths papers. 1891-1952. 11.73 cubic feet (25 boxes). 1 microfilm reel. + +1868 births +1946 deaths +Candidates in the 1920 United States presidential election +20th-century American politicians +Ambassadors of the United States to Peru +Politicians from Memphis, Tennessee +Politicians from Walla Walla, Washington +Washington (state) Progressives (1912) +Republican Party United States senators from Washington (state) +Washington and Lee University School of Law alumni +Republican Party members of the United States House of Representatives from Washington (state) +Old Right (United States) +American anti-communists +Progressive Party (1912) United States senators +Philip Dulebohn (born September 13, 1973 in Silver Spring, Maryland) is an American pair skater. He competed in pairs with partner Tiffany Scott, and the duo won the gold medal at the 2003 U.S. Figure Skating Championships. He and Scott ended their partnership in 2005, and now Dulebohn coaches at the University of Delaware ice arena in Newark, Delaware. + +His brother, Paul Dulebohn, was also a competitive skater. + +Results + +Men's singles + +Pairs with Tiffany Scott + +Programs +(with Scott) + +References + +External links + +Navigation + +Olympic figure skaters for the United States +1973 births +American male pair skaters +Figure skaters at the 2002 Winter Olympics +Living people +Four Continents Figure Skating Championships medalists +20th-century American sportsmen +21st-century American sportsmen +The Niangua River is a tributary of the Osage River in the Ozarks region of southern and central Missouri in the United States. Via the Osage and Missouri rivers it is part of the watershed of the Mississippi River. + +Niangua River has the name of Niangua (or Nehemgar), an Indian tribal leader. The name is said to mean "bear". + +Course +The Niangua River is formed in Webster County by the confluence of its short east and west forks, and flows generally northward through Dallas, Laclede and Camden counties, past Bennett Spring, Lake Niangua, and Ha Ha Tonka State Parks. It flows into the Osage River as an arm of the Lake of the Ozarks, which is formed by the Bagnell Dam on the Osage. As part of the lake it collects the Little Niangua River. + +River accesses +This is a list of areas where the Niangua River can be publicly accessed; this list was put in order from beginning of river to where river meets up with Lake of the Ozarks. +Bridal Cave +Charity Access- State-owned river access; no camping allowed. +Cline Ford +Hico Slab- Where a road crosses the river; the bridge is basically a low-lying concrete slab with water tunnels. +Del Marlin Ford +Deusenberry Creek +Gaunt Ford +Crane Ford +Route 32 Bridge +Big John Access- State-owned river access. +Wimberly Ford +Dallion Ford +Hackler Ford +Williams Ford Access- A one lane road crossing; crossing is a concrete slab where water flows over the top. +Hwy. K-P Bridge Access- Access includes privately owned campground, picnic area, and shuttle service. +Moon Valley Access- State-owned river access. +Hildebrand Ford +Cat Hollow- Privately owned campground and cabins nearby. +Route 64 Bridge +Bennett Spring Access- State-owned river access. +Barclay Springs- State-owned river access. +Gilbertson Ford +Prosperine Access- State-owned river access. +Mountain Creek- Access includes privately owned campground, picnic area, cabins and shuttle service. +McPheters Ford +Smith Ford +Leadmine Conservation Area- State-owned river access and conservation area; primitive camping allowed. +Lake Niangua- Includes access and picnic area; no camping allowed. +Whistle Bridge- Low-lying river crossing where road crosses river. +Stone Ford +Ha Ha Tonka State Park- State-owned river access; this is where the river merges into Lake of the Ozarks. + banister ford north of Macks creek + +See also +List of Missouri rivers + +References + +Columbia Gazetteer of North America entry +DeLorme (2002). Missouri Atlas & Gazetteer. Yarmouth, Maine: DeLorme. . + +Rivers of Missouri +Rivers of Camden County, Missouri +Rivers of Dallas County, Missouri +Rivers of Laclede County, Missouri +Rivers of Webster County, Missouri +Lake of the Ozarks +Tributaries of the Missouri River +Dogme et Rituel de la Haute Magie () is the title of Éliphas Lévi's first published treatise on ritual magic, which appeared in two volumes between 1854 (Dogme) and 1856 (Rituel). Each volume is structured into 22 chapters, which parallel the tarot. + +Translations +Lévi's Dogme et Rituel de la Haute Magie was translated into English by Arthur Edward Waite as Transcendental Magic, its Doctrine and Ritual (1896). Waite added a biographical preface and footnotes. A revised edition of this translation was published in 1923. + +A second translation, The Doctrine and Ritual of High Magic: A New Translation, by John Michael Greer and Mark Mikituk, was published in 2017 by TarcherPerigee. + +Response + +Modern +The work has recently attracted the attention of scholars for its views on the study of magic, religion, natural science and alchemy. Lévi sees magic as occupying a place between science and religion and believes that it has the potential to act as a conciliatory or mediating function between the two views. Lévi rejects views, such as E. B. Taylor's, that magic or religion is inherently irrational and has been superseded by modern science. Instead he posits magic as an "esoteric science" and suggests that Hermeticism could be adapted to find the underlying truth behind all magical systems, calling for a "comparative magic." Levi thus posits a type of Perennialism buttressed by comparative theology and comparative religion, anticipating modern-day religious studies and paralleling contemporary comparative projects in anthropology and philology such as the work of Max Müller. + +Contemporary + +References + +Citations + +Works cited + +External links + + + +1854 non-fiction books +Occult books +Treatises +Literature first published in serial form +William Newton Byers (February 22, 1831, in Madison County, Ohio – March 25, 1903) was a founding figure of Omaha, Nebraska, serving as the first deputy surveyor of the Nebraska Territory, on the first Omaha City Council, and as a member of the first Nebraska Territorial Legislature. + +He was also an early settler of Denver, Colorado, and the founder and editor of the Rocky Mountain News in Denver. He was married to Elizabeth Byers who was a prominent woman in Denver for her philanthropic activities. They lived in the Byers–Evans House, now a museum that is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. + +Early life +Byers was born in Madison County, Ohio, to Moses and Mary. In 1851, he moved with his parents to Iowa, and then to Omaha, Nebraska, as the city was being laid out in 1854. + +Career +In Omaha, he became the first deputy surveyor in the Nebraska Territory, in which capacity he created the first official plat of Omaha. A partnership with Andrew J. Poppleton led Byers to make the first map of the city of Omaha. Soon afterwards he became a member of the first city council, and a member of the first session of the Nebraska Territorial Legislature, convened January 16, 1855, in Omaha. + +In 1859 Byers moved to Denver to take advantage of recent gold strikes in the area. Taking the printing presses of the defunct Bellevue Gazette by oxcart, he and J. H. Kellom were the authors of a handbook to the gold fields, published that year. Robert W. Furnas, in 1859 associated with the Nebraska Advertiser, later recalled that Byers had bought the equipment of the defunct and had it taken by ox team to Denver, then in western Kansas Territory, where he used it in the publication of the Rocky Mountain News. The Rocky Mountain News was the first newspaper printed in Colorado; it continued publication until 2009. + +In 1863 Byers purchased Hot Sulphur Springs in northern Colorado from a Minnesota Sioux woman in a shady deal, causing the real owners, the Ute tribe, to unsuccessfully sue. Byers' plans to turn it into "America's Switzerland" were foiled by the failure of the railroad to arrive until 1928. + +Byers wrote numerous editorials justifying the 1864 Sand Creek Massacre, maintaining even years later that "Sand Creek saved Colorado, and taught the Indians the most salutary lesson they had ever learned." +